python style triple-double-quotes

[Dan Larkin]

Fellow clojurecrats,

I'm here to ask for python style triple-double-quotes syntax in clojure.

For those unfamiliar they're documented here: http://docs.python.org/reference/lexical_analysis.html#strings

This is also a nice summary: http://diveintopython.org/getting_to_know_python/documenting_functions.html

Rich, you said you were considering it in March (http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/8690a80c263d3b52/e8d73aebf11c2698
), did anything ever come of that?

Dan

[James Reeves]

On Dec 13, 9:34 pm, Dan Larkin <d...@danlarkin.org> wrote:
> I'm here to ask for python style triple-double-quotes syntax in clojure.

I'm not completely sure they're needed, to be honest. In Python,
triple quotes have 2 benefits: multi-line quotes and you don't have to
escape quotation marks. In Clojure, normal quotes can already be multi-
line, so the only benefit of this syntax in Clojure would be to save
on backslashes. That might be a worthy goal, I guess, but I've never
found myself using quotes in string literals that often. Maybe I'm an
exception, though.

- James

[Dan Larkin]

Yes, I'd like the feature because it's a pain in the neck to go
through and escape strings when I know there's a better way.

Also sometimes it doesn't feel right to escape strings... for instance
in function doc strings I'd like to give an example return value. But
if the value has to be escaped to play nice with the docstring it can
get confusing confusing... for me at least. I'd like to put *exactly*
what will be returned.

Dan

[Cosmin Stejerean]

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 7:06 PM, Dan Larkin <d...@danlarkin.org> wrote:

Yes, I'd like the feature because it's a pain in the neck to go
through and escape strings when I know there's a better way.

Also sometimes it doesn't feel right to escape strings... for instance
in function doc strings I'd like to give an example return value.  But
if the value has to be escaped to play nice with the docstring it can
get confusing confusing... for me at least.  I'd like to put *exactly*
what will be returned.

Docstrings are definitely a perfect use-case for triple quoted strings. +1 on including something similar in Clojure. 

--
Cosmin Stejerean
http://www.offbytwo.com

[Martin DeMello]

On Dec 14, 6:06 am, Dan Larkin <d...@danlarkin.org> wrote:
> Yes, I'd like the feature because it's a pain in the neck to go  
> through and escape strings when I know there's a better way.

For escaping strings, I prefer ruby's solution, which is to have
reader support for arbitrary delimiters, either matched pairs of
brackets - %() %<> %{} %[] - or matched nonalphanumeric characters
like %|| . Could be done in clojure by having a specific reader macro
like #<string indicator><delimiter><string><delimiter>

martin