David Leibs has been pushing a well-thought-through facility he calls (and other systems name) "quasi-quote". �Here, a string literal contains escape sequences, a little like printf, that allow one to substitute values. �Dave's syntax uses square brackets to escape into Smalltalk.�
That's certainly a useful construct, but I don't think it addresses Terry's problem. He wants a string literal that can include $' and CR without escaping. Something like HEREDOC or Python's triple-double-quote string literals.
Colin