On Jan 11, 2008, at 1:14 PM, Todd Burch wrote:

> Gary Wright wrote:
>
>> I would guess because it is simpler to implement and simpler to
>> understand.
>> ...
>> It is just simpler and less ambiguous to look for a line that
>> contains the delimiter and only the delimiter.
>>
>> Gary Wright
>
> Well, I would agree that certainly would be simpler to implement.
> However, I don't see it as conforming to the rest of ruby's loose  
> coding
> allowances.

Here documents are a pretty special case.  They are there  
specifically so you can imbed somewhat arbitrary text in the source  
code.  As such it makes sense to have a very specific way to  
terminate that text rather than a looser match that might accidently  
coincide with some data.  Obviously the choice of a delimiter is  
important.

Gary Wright