On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda@gmail.com>wrote:

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Terry Raymond < traymond@craftedsmalltalk.com> wrote:

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I constantly run into the situation where I am incorporating either HTML or javascript****

in my methods. The problem I run into is the smalltalk string quote(‘). It is a real pain****

to double quote it, and don’t even try to copy and paste external javascript.****

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So, I think it would be real helpful to have some other funky string quote like****

##{{ }}## or some sequence that is very unlikely to occur in another language.****

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Has anyone done this or even thought about it?

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. So that (IIRC) you say things like

'<html><head></head><body><H1>[myHeading]</H1>'

which compiles to something analogous to

String streamContents: [:s| s nextPutAll: '<html><head></head><body><H1>'; nextPutAll: myHeading asString; nextPutAll: '</H1>]

But this excellent suggestion has fallen on deaf ears (my own included) for more than a decade.

<blush>, saw quote, brian farted, now realize this is nothing to do with your issue Terry. Apologies</blush>. But you could come up with some convention to embed in quasi-quote to change the string quote, right? he thing is to choose your escape character(s) with care. You need a quote to escape to and from processing ($[ & $]). You need a literal quote ( $\ ?). Do you need a third quote to change quote interpretation? Or do you need a third quote that turns off single quote as end of string? eg. say $^ indicates no close quote until the matching $^. So the following '^'my single-quoted string'^' denotes '''my single-quoted string''' and I realize I can't remember how David's proposal distinguishes between quasi-quote strings and normal Smalltalk strings.

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...

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Terry****

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===========================================================****

Terry Raymond****

Crafted Smalltalk****

80 Lazywood Ln.****

Tiverton, RI 02878****

(401) 624-4517 traymond@craftedsmalltalk.com ****

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-- best, Eliot

-- best, Eliot