Mandis Quotes (aka retiring """ and ''')

[Jeff Shannon]

Russell Nelson wrote:

>It really would be better to have one(1) string literal
>which can quote anything without reverting to backslashing.  Why one?
>Simpler parsing, simpler learning of the language, fewer choices to
>make while programming.
>  
>

The problem being, of course, that you need to find a string literal 
that will *never*, *ever* appear inside of a string literal.  Even in 
strings that contain language describing the quoting of string 
literals.  If there's any possibility of the need to display that 
particular string literal, then you need to either have an alternate 
(and what if you need both alternates in a string? then you need a third 
alternate...) or you need to have a way of escaping it.  ISTM that these 
elaborate Mandis-quote schemes may significantly reduce the odds of 
needing to escape a string literal, but the cost (in clarity, 
transparency, and most importantly, ability to manipulate your code in 
anything other than an advanced, complying editor) is pretty high.  I 
find '''triple quotes''' a lot easier to understand/explain than this 
scheme of defining arbitrary delimiters.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International