resolving backslash newline whisky tango foxtrot: a proposal

[Joe Buck]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 11:35:45AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote:
> Joe Buck wrote:
> >On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 03:45:33AM -0700, Per Bothner wrote:
> >
> >>1. Change the behavior (back) so only '\\$', not '\\ *$', causes a
> >>  line to be continued.
> 
> >The problem with your item #1 is that there is then no way of flagging
> >code that won't work with the large numbers of production compilers
> >based on gcc 3.x, as well as code that will break if anyone ever removes
> >trailing whitespace (something that can easily happen in the process
> >of editing the code). 
> 
> My hope was that an improved on-by-default -Wcomment would catch that.
> I.e. it would warn about any code that act be differently depending
> on whether trailing whitspace is removed.

So you want the compiler to only consider '\\$" a continuation, but to
have an unsilenceable warning about '\\ *$'?  That would appear not to
solve the problem of the customers who are wedded to their line art,
that started this discussion in the first place.