Just in case it wasn’t clear, I want to emphasize that my suggestion of using a rectangle-of-double-quotes was intended as a serious proposal—admittedly one that looks unusual and would require good cooperation from each IDE to be practical, but one that solves a number of the problems about that we are facing about indentation and whether to strip whitespace.
—Guy > On Apr 10, 2019, at 5:48 PM, Guy Steele <guy.ste...@oracle.com> wrote: > > >> On Apr 10, 2019, at 5:36 PM, Guy Steele <guy.ste...@oracle.com >> <mailto:guy.ste...@oracle.com>> wrote: >> >> >>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 4:54 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.go...@oracle.com >>> <mailto:brian.go...@oracle.com>> wrote: >>> >>> This is a plateful! >>> >>> Stripping "incidental" whitespace is an attractive target of opportunity; >>> the real question is, can we do it right enough of the time, and when we >>> get it wrong, is there an easy way for the user to recover and get what >>> they want? >>> >>> Kevin described this as: "find the magic rectangle"; that there should be a >>> rectangle enclosing the snippet that sets apart the incidental whitespace >>> from the essential. In your examples, most of the time, the magic >>> rectangle is, well, the actual rectangle in your text. >>> >>> >>>> >>>> Examples; >>>> >>>> String a = """ >>>> +--------+ >>>> | text | >>>> +--------+ >>>> """; // first characters in first column? >> >> Which suggests yet another approach to multiline string literals: >> >> String a = “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” >> “A rectangle of double quotes " >> “ can enclose any arbitrary text “ >> “ with any desired indentation, “ >> “ and you can assume any trailing “ >> “ whitespace on each line will be “ >> “ removed and that each line will “ >> “ end with a \\n <smb://n>. “ >> “ “ >> “So all you need is IDE support for “ >> “ making nice rectangles. “ >> “””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””; >> >> String result = “””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” >> “public class Main { “ >> “ public static void main(String... args) { “ >> “ System.out.println("Hello World!”); “ >> “ } “ >> “} “ >> “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””; >> >> String html = “”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””” >> “<html> “ >> “ <body style=\"width: 100vw\”> “ >> “ <p>Hello World.</p> “ >> “ </body> “ >> “ <script>console.log(\"\\nloaded\")</script>” >> “</html> “ >> “””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””; >> > > Note that I was inconsistent with my use of escapes. I reckon you should be > able to use escapes, but perhaps one need not escape included double quotes > because you can tell from the length of the initial line of double-quotes how > much text to skip before you expect see the double quote that marks the > right-hand edge of the rectangle. >
