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Re: [ddlm-group] THREAD TRIPLE QUOTES - Specification

The main value of the treble quoted string is that it allows a much
neater presentation of examples of chunks of CIFS and text in which
presenting such information within semi-colon quoted strings gets
somewhat confusing.

For this reason, I would suggest that the most important test of
Nick's suggestions would be how faithfully a semi-colon delimited
example could be included with _no_ added or subtracted characters,
so that people reading dictionaries by eye will reproduce those
examples correctly.

For that reason, I hope we can stay as close to """ and ''' delimiting
truly raw data as possible.

Regards,
   Herbert

=====================================================
  Herbert J. Bernstein, Professor of Computer Science
    Dowling College, Kramer Science Center, KSC 121
         Idle Hour Blvd, Oakdale, NY, 11769

                  +1-631-244-3035
                  yaya@dowling.edu
=====================================================

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009, Nick Spadaccini wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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