[Rd] [WISH / PATCH] possibility to split string literals across multiple lines

Andreas Kersting
Wed, 14 Jun 2017 10:58:38 -0000

Hi,

I would really like to have a way to split long string literals across
multiple lines in R.

Currently, if a string literal spans multiple lines, there is no way to
inhibit the introduction of newline characters:

 > "aaa
+ bbb"
[1] "aaa\nbbb"


If a line ends with a backslash, it is just ignored:

 > "aaa\
+ bbb"
[1] "aaa\nbbb"


We could use this fact to implement string splitting in a fairly
backward-compatible way, since currently such trailing backslashes
should hardly be used as they do not have any effect. The attached patch
makes the parser ignore a newline character directly following a backslash:

 > "aaa\
+ bbb"
[1] "aaabbb"


I personally would also prefer if leading blanks (spaces and tabs) in
the second line are ignored to allow for proper indentation:

 >   "aaa \
+    bbb"
[1] "aaa bbb"

 >   "aaa\
+    \ bbb"
[1] "aaa bbb"

This is also implemented by this patch.


An alternative approach could be to have something like

("aaa "
"bbb")

or

("aaa ",
"bbb")

be interpreted as "aaa bbb".

I don't know the ins and outs of the parser of R (hence: please very
carefully review the attached patch), but I guess this would be more
work to implement!?


What do you think? Is there anybody else who is missing this feature in
the first place?

Regards,
Andreas
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