Subject: Re: bug#13644: String read syntax should allow "\(" to mean "("

From: David Kastrup <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 2013 11:12:00 +0100

Andy Wingo <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Thu 07 Feb 2013 10:12, David Kastrup <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Rationale: GUILE already supports a number of escapes not defined in the
>> Scheme standard.  Emacs Lisp modes and derivative modes treat opening
>> parens in the first column of a file specially, resynchronizing function
>> boundaries.  The respective manual entry states:
>>
>> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Left-Margin-Paren.html>
>>
>> Being able to escape opening parens makes it possible to write
>> Emacs-friendly Guile code.
>
> It's not a bad idea.  I'm hesitant to add new string syntax, though, and
> would appreciate input from other people before going ahead with this.
>
> You can of course work around this with hex escapes, though that is not
> very readable.

A slightly better workaround is using \ at the end of the preceding line
and \n( on the afflicted line itself.  But it does not exactly win a
beauty competition either.

-- 
David Kastrup