Re: [Gretl-devel] backslash
On Mon, 5 Nov 2012, Sven Schreiber wrote:
nothing new here, but I just recently fully realized that the
backslash
char \ has a double meaning in hansl: matrix left-division as well as
line continuation character. Isn't that unfortunate from a syntactical
point of view, in the sense that I could fairly easily imagine cases
where the meanings clash?
Actually, I can't imagine such a case. Maybe my imagination is
lacking, but here's my reasoning.
* Backslash indicates command continuation only if it is the
last (non-white space) character on a line of hansl input.
* The left-division operator can never be valid as the last
character on a line of hansl, since it requires a right-hand
operand.
So, if you ever find yourself wanting to break a line in the
middle of left-division you should be able to do so with two
successive backslashes. (Admittedly I haven't tested this, but
if by any chance it doesn't work that should be a fixable
bug.)
BTW it's not uncommon for backslash to do double-duty. E.g. in
many languages "\\" parses out as: backslash 1, escape
character; backslash 2, literal backslash.
Allin