Minor, minor style question

[Cameron Laird]

Why would I prefer
  string = ""
  string = string + "abc "
  string = string + "def "
  string = string + "xyz"
over
  string = "abc " + \
	      "def " + \
	      "xyz"
?  I see a lot of the former in contexts I associate
with Visual Basic- or JavaScript-majority folkways.
Is there an attraction to the redundancy (and fragil-
ity!) I'm missing?  Are \-s *so* deprecated?
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html