Alternate string quote syntaxes

Alternate string quote syntaxes

Motivation

• doc strings with examples could be more human readable

• XML, JSON or SQL generation tests become filled with escaped quotes

• pasting JSON into a string, which could then easily have `read-json` called on it

Possible Solutions

Python-like triple quoted strings

Pros:

• relatively simple syntax, for humans and parsers

Cons:

• minor breaking change - """""" which is  3 empty strings would now be interpreted as only one empty string
• have to add reader macro
• breaking change to every other tool that reads Clojure syntax
  • including regexp-based syntax colorers, etc.

Heredocs

Pros: slightly more flexible than triple-quotes

Cons: more complex syntax

String Interpolation / Templating

Pros:

Cons:

Puzzles:

• is the built-in format function enough?

Resource files

Pros:

• Already exists

Cons:

• Separate file for each string
• Can't use for macro-interpreted things like doc strings
• In tests, having the test data separate from the test itself is hard to read