Tomas, Here is a good example of where this functionality would be useful: https://github.com/R-ArcGIS/arcgislayers/blob/2b29f4c254e7e5a1dadce8d4b0015a70dfae39d4/R/arc-open.R#L19-L56
In order to prevent R CMD check notes I have to use `paste0()` to concatenate long URLs. If we were able to use `\` to separate the string across multiple lines, it would make the solution much nicer! On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 3:19 AM Tomas Kalibera <tomas.kalib...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 5/28/25 04:15, Pavel Krivitsky via R-devel wrote: > > Dear All, > > > > Perhaps this should go in r-package-devel, but I suspect that this is > > going to turn into a feature request, and I want to run it by the list > > before filing it in the Bugzilla. > > > > I would like to specify a long string literal without making the line > > of code too long. In R, > > > > "abc > > def" > > > > yields the string "abc\def", and, as far as I can tell, there is no > > mechanism for preventing it from inserting a newline into the string. > > > > Putting a backslash before the newline, i.e., > > > > "abc\ > > def" > > > > eliminates the newline in (that I know of) C/C++, Python, and Julia, > > but it makes no difference in R. > > > > The implicit concatenation of Python and C/C++, e.g., "abc" "def", is a > > syntax error as well in R. > > > > It is, of course, possible to use paste0(), but is there a more concise > > built-in mechanism in R of which I am not aware? > > > > If not, I think it would make sense to bring R in line with the others. > > Currently, backslash and no backslash before a newline behave > > identically (at least as far as I can tell), so I doubt that a > > nontrivial amount of code relies on the current behaviour. [1] > > What would be real example of a long string literal you would want to > enter this way? > > For entering a long text with newlines, one can use raw strings in R > (see ?Quotes) - but there you would see the newlines and indentation. > I've seen code where "paste0" has been aliased to a local function > named with a single letter to make concatenation more concise. > > Best > Tomas > > > > > Any thoughts? > > Pavel > > > > [1] On the off chance that it does, it should easy to check by > > searching for "\\\n" in package sources, because a backslash before a > > newline is a syntax error outside a string. > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
