"j anderson" <anderson@badmama.com.au.REMOVE> wrote in message news:bgte8b$2cs$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> "Mark Evans" <Mark_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:bg6rkb$2k4p$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> >
> > OK, Walter, here is my final answer.  Do not use @ even though C# uses
it.
> That
> > was a bad choice on Microsoft's part.  They really should have known
> better.
> > Too many preprocessors and languages use @ for special purposes.  Think
> SWIG,
> > JavaDoc, etc.
> >
> > Use r"string"r or raw"string"raw.  The advantage here is that you can
> later
> > define new types of strings with a new letter (Unicode? a string of
bits,
> > b"101010101111111000000" or hexadecimal bit groups,
> x"ABCD12340000FFFF11111"?).
> > So in a sense it's extensible and future-proof.  This syntax is also
> reminiscent
> > of C's numeric prefix and suffix notations, 0xABCD, 0b1010, 1.234L, etc.
> >
> > The numeric string concept is convenient for static pre-assignment of
> memory.
> > The alternatives in C are not pretty:  arrays of smaller things (comma,
> comma,
> > comma, comma, another comma,...) or an unreadable string
> ("#$~H*G_#@jdkBG$*&").
> > So this notation is extra candy on top for embedded programming work.
> >
> > The redundant closing letter is optional but recommended.  It solves the meta-escape problem very cleanly.  (Actually it's dumbed-down XML.)  The
b
> and x
> > variants would not require closing letters, as their contents are
> intrinsically
> > limited.  Whitespace should be allowed in them of course, x"ABCD 1234
> FF00".
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> I came to a simular conclusion. The there suggested syntaxes (I haven't
read
> all the replies) would make it much harder for the transition from C to D. Explaining that a character is put in front of the quote is easier then explaining that you need to use a particular symbol instead of quote.
>
>  There may be some use for this syntax on array's as well.
>
> u{10,12,16}; //enforce unsigned.
> r{10,12,16}; //read only.
> o{10,12,16}; //ordered.
> fi{c:\data.txt}; //file to import integer array from.
>
> I can't think of anything *good* right now, but it's an option for latter down the track.
>

Another idea would be {" "}
The {" "} would imply it's an array of chars. Of course " would still need
to be overloaded, but that could be done with a double quote.

i.e.
char a[] = {"This is an in-text quote ""."};

or parhaps even better

char a[] = {"This is an in-text quote ", 34, ".");
char a[] = {"This is an in-text quote ", '"', ".");

All would print
This is an in-text quote ".

Although I still don't mind the append char "r" to front of string technique.

-
J Anderson