Fwd: String reboot (plain text)

[Brian Goetz]

Received on amber-spec-comments.  These are mostly comments on syntax options that are for later parts of the discussion, so I’m reading them into the record now, and we’re going to leave them to sit until then.  

High-order summary:
 - Please consider prefixes a”…” for auto-align and r”…” for raw.  

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org>
> Subject: Re: String reboot (plain text)
> Date: March 21, 2019 at 11:14:53 AM EDT
> To: amber-spec-comments at openjdk.java.net
> Cc: Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com>
> 
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 at 17:52, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
>> So, in the spirit of “keep ordering until sated, but stop there”, here are some reasonable choices.
>> 
>> 1.  Do multi-line (escaped) strings with a “”” fixed delimiter.  Large benefit, small cost.  Most embedded snippets don’t need any escaping.  Low cost, big payoff.
>> 
>> 1a.  Do 1, but automatically reflow multi-line strings using the equivalent of String::align.  There have been reasonable proposals on how to do this; where they fell apart is the interaction with raw-ness, but if we separate ML and raw, these become reasonable again.  Higher cost, but higher payoff; having separated the interaction with raw strings, this is more defensible.
>> 
>> 2.  Do (1) or (1a), and add: single-line raw string literals delimited by \”…”\.
>> 
>> 2a.  Do (1) or (1a), and also support multi-line raw string literals (where we _don’t_ automatically apply String::align; this can be done manually).  Note that this creates anomalies for multi-line raw string literals starting with quotes (this can be handled with concatenation, and having separated ML and raw, this is less of a problem than before).
>> 
>> 3.  Do (2) and (2a), and also support a repeating compound delimiter with multiple backslashes and a quote.
> 
> My views have not changed dramatically from my last mail [1]. As per
> these options, I think the language would benefit from 1, 1a, 2 and 2a
> type changes. I think the choice between 1 and 1a is a false one. I'm
> not convinced 3 is worth pursuing.
> 
> I agree that triple double-quote is the right mechanism for multi-line
> strings - an obvious direction for Java. I'm happy to accept 1 on its
> own *providing that 1a can be added later*. My preference is for """
> to be the delimiter for non-aligned multi-line strings, and for a
> single letter prefix 'a' to be used for aligned strings, eg. a""" ...
> """
> 
> For raw strings I personally find the syntax /" ... "/ or /""" ...
> """/ unpleasant. While the argument of "distributing the escape over
> the string" makes some sense in the abstract, the result is not
> appealing to read. Given that I believe aligned and non-aligned
> strings should be separated by a single letter prefix, I believe that
> raw strings and non-raw strings should also be separated by a single
> letter prefix:
> 
> """ - multi-line with-escapes & non-aligned
> a""" - multi-line with-escapes & aligned
> r""" - multi-line raw & non-aligned
> ra""" - multi-line raw & aligned
> " - single-line with-escapes
> r" - single-line raw
> 
> And yes, I do think you can have raw and aligned as a combination. I
> think using prefix letters is more extensible, more orthogonal and
> clearer than using /""" ... """/.
> 
> thanks
> Stephen
> 
> [1] https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/amber-dev/2019-January/003850.html

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