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[ddlm-group] THREAD TRIPLE QUOTES - Specification
- To: Group finalising DDLm and associated dictionaries <ddlm-group@iucr.org>
- Subject: [ddlm-group] THREAD TRIPLE QUOTES - Specification
- From: Nick Spadaccini <nick@csse.uwa.edu.au>
- Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:04:30 +0800
- Authentication-Results: postfix;
Our last discussion on the implementation of triple quoted strings resulted in much to-ing and fro-ing and in the end the conclusion was that its behaviour was to be identical to the semi-colon delimited strings. I preferred a greater degree of parsing of the string but this was not popular. Now our illustrious chair, who sits next to me now, asks the question "what is the point of the triple quoted string", to which I can only shrug my shoulders. The triple quote string will be useful for containing strings that include ", ' and ; (in the first character in a record). They will of course fail when you attempt to include the sequence """. Hence they are no different to a ; delimited string that cannot include a ; as the first character of a line. Here is a suggestion. The triple quote string (delimited by """) will treat its contents a raw, except that (a) When writing the string, ALL quotes contained within will have a space inserted immediately after the " character. This will allow the triple quote to be contained within the string by breaking the sequence with spaces so the tokeniser is not fooled in to terminating the string. Clearly the reverse operation is required in reading the string. I this way is is possible to include all manner of text, markup and programming scripts within a triple quoted string. (b) We will formally accept in this string the "eliding" of the newline character. Hence a reverse solidus (\) immediately prior to the record terminating character(s) will imply the \ and the record terminating characters are deleted from the stream, and the next line is wrapped around. To allow for the odd case when one want's to literally include the \ and the record terminating character(s) in the string then the required \ will be elided. In parsing the contents of a string the only things required are (1) delete one of the spaces after every " (2) treat \<newline> as a wrap around (3) treat \\<newline> as the raw string \<newline> All other characters are left as is. cheers Nick -------------------------------- Associate Professor N. Spadaccini, PhD School of Computer Science & Software Engineering The University of Western Australia t: +61 (0)8 6488 3452 35 Stirling Highway f: +61 (0)8 6488 1089 CRAWLEY, Perth, WA 6009 AUSTRALIA w3: www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~nick MBDP M002 CRICOS Provider Code: 00126G e: Nick.Spadaccini@uwa.edu.au _______________________________________________ ddlm-group mailing list ddlm-group@iucr.org http://scripts.iucr.org/mailman/listinfo/ddlm-group
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