🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <44qg8v$s1m@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>,
Richard Berthold <berthold@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Is there a limit to the number of characters in a physical line of C
> code which a "standard" compiler must be able to read (ie all lines
> must be less than 80 characters etc)?
> If there is no standard limit, does anyone know of any current
> compilers with small limits ie < 512 ?

The standard only guarantees 509 characters will be acceptable for *logical*
lines, *after* backslash-continuedd lines have been spliced together.
I don't think your technique is going to work in general.

What you can do is insert *unescaped* newlines anywhere a space is legal.
The they're separate logical lines (a single expression can span multiple
lines) and the problem doesn't arise.

> Must all compilers support \ as a line continuation character?

By the standard, yes.

> Is it always a continuation even if preceded by another \?

No.  If preceded by an *odd* number of backslashes, it's the second
part of a \\ escape, which corresponds to \ in the middle of a line.
(It better be inside a string literal or it's not valid C.)

For example, I cannot split:

printf("Hello, world!\n");

into:

printf("Hello, world!\\
n");

The latter is roughly equivalent to

printf("Hello, world!\\\nn");

I can, however, split it into:

p\
r\
i\
n\
t\
f
(
"\
H\
e\
l\
l\
o\
,\
 \
w\
o\
r\
l\
d\
!\
\n\
"
)
;

Note the places I did *not* insert a backslash.
-- 
	-Colin