On Monday 03 February 2003 01:26 am, nobu.nokada / softhome.net wrote:
> Hi,
>
> At Fri, 31 Jan 2003 19:37:52 +0900,
>
> Tom Sawyer wrote:
> > from a general script programmer's standpoint (mine) this is one of those
> > exhalted features that one often thinks "would'nt it be nice if..." but
> > as far as i know, no language has ever made a string syntax like this
> > available...hopefully, until now.
>
> Probably, because nothing can appear after this literal in the
> same line, I guess.  Now I doubt its usefulness.

its utitlity comes from one simple fact: efficiency. when one uses:

	x = <<-EOS
                this is
                come
                text
	EOS

or 

	x = %Q{
                this is
                come
                text
	}

you've just thrown in an extra 24+ bytes of wasted empty space. and accounts 
for the fact that the use of String#tabto has been publicized:

	x = %Q{
                this is
                come
                text
	}.tabto(0)

which is a waste of processing and isn't very elegent.

-- 
tom sawyer, aka transami
transami / transami.net