> On 13 Jul 2017, at 23:14, David Hart via swift-evolution > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On 14 Jul 2017, at 00:21, Jordan Rose <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> [Proposal: >> https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0182-newline-escape-in-strings.md >> >> <https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0182-newline-escape-in-strings.md>] >> >> This is a tiny, tiny point amidst the broader discussions others are having, >> but >> >>> • All whitespace characters between \ and the newline are disregarded. >> >> Why? Why bother allowing whitespace characters between \ and the newline? > > The reasoning is to be consistent with trailing whitespace in the rest of the > code: to leave that to a linter instead. Or to see it differently, even with > whitespace between \ and the newline, the programmer’s intent is still clear. > Why generate an error?
For the same reason that code allows (e.g.) a comment at the end of the line; you wouldn't expect (newline continuation) (comment) to mean the same thing as if generic whitespace were added at the end. The convention in other languages is that \ immediately precedes the line feed to indicate a continuation, not that an orphan \ is valid on its own. The reason that \(newline) is valid while \(otherchar)(newline) isn't is because \ immediately precedes another character that it is escaping, and it's possible that \(space) would have a meaning in the future, whereas \(newline) won't. Alex
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