[Rd] Parsing multi-line strings. Bug? Feature?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

One workaround is the idea in 

http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/help/03a/6855.html

which, applied to this problem would be used by entering the
snippets as inline data files and reading them into R variables
which can then be cat'ed.  You do have to preface each line of
the inline data with a marker but that is trivial in 
sufficiently powerful text editors.

---

Date:   	Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:09:04 -0700 (PDT)
From:   	Kevin Wright <kwright at eskimo.com>
To:   	<r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Subject:   	[Rd] Parsing multi-line strings. Bug? Feature?

I have an S-Plus library that I would like to port to R. The library
sends a mix of static and dynamic output to an html file. For example

cat("
...
Big block of HTML formatting code
...
")
cat(dat())
cat("
More static text
")

With S-Plus I can just cut and paste HTML code from other files into my
S-Plus script file. This makes maintenance of the script fairly easy.

The R parser chokes on this and requires strings to have a backslash for
line continuation:

f = function(){
sometext = " abc \
def"
}

Mark Bravington discussed the same issue (with comments about
the documentation) here:
http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/02b/5199.html

I would like to echo Mark's request that compatability with S-Plus
be considered.

Thanks

Kevin Wright