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Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now!

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Date 2011-12-29 08:42 +1100
Subject Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now!
From Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
Newsgroups comp.lang.python
Message-ID <mailman.4199.1325108570.27778.python-list@python.org> (permalink)

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Nathan Rice
<nathan.alexander.rice@gmail.com> wrote:
> Quotes are obnoxious in the nesting sense because everyone uses quotes
> for string delimiters.  By the same token, quotes are wonderful
> because not only are they intuitive to programmers, but they are
> intuitive in general.  Parenthesis are pretty much in the same boat...
> I *HATE* them nested, but they are so intuitive that replacing them is
> a non starter;  Just write code that doesn't nest parenthesis.

Parentheses have different starting and ending delimiters and must be
'properly nested' (ie there must be exactly-matching inner parens
inside any given set of outer parens (note that English has similar
rules - you can't mis-nest parentheses (at any depth) in either
language)). You can't guarantee the same about quoted strings -
suppose the starting delimiter were ' and the ending " (or vice
versa), it still wouldn't deal with the issue of coming across an
apostrophe inside a quoted string.

In actual fact, the real problem is that quoted strings need to be
able to contain _anything_. The only true solution to that is
length-provided strings:

s = "4spam
q = "14Hello, world!\n

This works beautifully in interchange formats, but rather poorly in
source code (or, for that matter, anything editable).

ChrisA

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Thread

Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> - 2011-12-27 19:49 -0800
  Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 15:17 +1100
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> - 2011-12-27 20:36 -0800
  Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-28 04:20 +0000
  Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> - 2011-12-27 21:34 -0800
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-28 06:58 +0000
      Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohnson@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 11:36 -0800
        Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Dominic Binks <dbinks@codeaurora.org> - 2011-12-28 12:10 -0800
        Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Lie Ryan <lie.1296@gmail.com> - 2011-12-29 07:13 +1100
        Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 13:52 -0700
        Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-28 22:54 +0000
          Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-29 10:08 +1100
          Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2011-12-29 01:44 +0000
          Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Lie Ryan <lie.1296@gmail.com> - 2011-12-30 10:19 +1100
          Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-30 10:24 +1100
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 18:47 +1100
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Lie Ryan <lie.1296@gmail.com> - 2011-12-29 07:53 +1100
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! python@bdurham.com - 2011-12-28 16:03 -0500
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Nathan Rice <nathan.alexander.rice@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 16:24 -0500
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-29 08:42 +1100
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Nathan Rice <nathan.alexander.rice@gmail.com> - 2011-12-28 17:24 -0500
    Re: Py-dea: Streamline string literals now! Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2011-12-29 00:00 -0500

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