A desperate lunge for on-topic-ness

[Dave Angel]

On 10/18/2012 12:26 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Evan Driscoll <driscoll at cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>    Python isn't as bad as C++ though (my main other language), where
>>    80 characters can go by *very* quickly.
>>
>> 2. Backslash continuations are *terrible*. I hate them with a firery
>>    passion. :-) A line could be 1000 characters long and it would be
>>    better than a 120-character line backslash-continued.
> I have one mid-sized C++ project at work that's pretty much
> exclusively under my control. There is precisely ONE place where
> backslash continuations crop up, and that's long strings that want to
> be formatted on multiple lines (eg huge SQL statements) - in Python,
> they'd be trip-quoted. We don't have *any* backslash continuations in
> Python code.
>
>

But both C++ and Python have automatic concatenation of adjacent
strings.  So you can just start and end each line with a quote, and
leave off the backslash.

Similarly, if you need a newline at the end of each line, you can use
the \n just before the trailing quote.  Naturally I agree with you that
this case is better handled in Python with triple-quote.

I never use the backslash at end-of-line to continue a statement to the
next.  Not only is it a readability problem, but if your editor doesn't
have visible spaces, you can accidentally have whitespace after the
backslash, and wonder what went wrong.

-- 

DaveA