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Parsing multi-line strings. Bug? Feature?

2 messages · Kevin Wright, Brian Ripley

Original
Kevin Wright
# 
I have an S-Plus library that I would like to port to R.  The library 
sends a mix of static and dynamic output to an html file.  For example

cat("
...
Big block of HTML formatting code
...
")
cat(dat())
cat("
More static text
")

With S-Plus I can just cut and paste HTML code from other files into my 
S-Plus script file.  This makes maintenance of the script fairly easy.

The R parser chokes on this and requires strings to have a backslash for 
line continuation:

f = function(){
 sometext = " abc \
def"
}

Mark Bravington discussed the same issue (with comments about
the documentation) here:
http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/02b/5199.html

I would like to echo Mark's request that compatability with S-Plus 
be considered.

Thanks

Kevin Wright
Brian Ripley
# 
Perhaps the two of you would like to submit a patch for consideration?
I think you can take it that it was considered in Dec 2002 and no one 
wanted to do the work to check the feasibility.

The form in Open Source projects is that those who want a feature 
implement it and offer it to the maintainers.
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Kevin Wright wrote: