dub: should we make it the de jure package manager for D?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:04:37 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> As for long values, I've always disliked the fact that almost all
> formats provide a way to wrap them across multiple lines, but almost
> none of them let you indent the result nicely without also changing
> the value.  This is important for complex configuration formats that
> have nested groups of settings. In my format, the syntax is
> specifically catered for this use case, for example:
> 
> 	# This is a comment
> 	value1 = "This is a very long value \
> 	         \split across multiple \
> 	         \lines."
> 	value2 = "A short value"
> 
> 	module1 {
> 		# These values are in a nested scope, so they are
> 		# distinct from the settings above.
> 		value1 = "This is another long \
> 		         \value split across \
> 		         \multiple lines."
> 		value2 = "This is a value \
> 		         \with an embedded \   # a long value
> 		         \comment!"
> 	}
> 

SDL supports that sort of thing (except for the embedded comment,
which I agree would be kinda nice):

http://sdl.ikayzo.org/display/SDL/Language+Guide
See section "String Literals"

Your example would look like this :

# This is a comment
value1 "This is a very long value \
        split across multiple \
        lines."
value2 "A short value"

module1 {
	# These values are in a nested scope, so they are
	# distinct from the settings above.
	value1 "This is another long \
	        value split across \
	        multiple lines."
}

If you want the indentation *kept*, then use backquote strings (and
omit the line continuation backslashes).

The embedded comments could be easily added, but that would take it
into "non-standard behavior" territory. (I actually had to
deliberately disallow it just to match the behavior of the reference
implementation).