Although I no longer think the idea is useful, quoted contexts would be
very easy to detect and avoid.
I think that, and this is the impression I got from skimming that thread,
is that raw string literals are:
1. it's only really used for regex
2. it would be better to have a function that adds escapes to regexp
strings, rather than make it easier to add them.
3. it would require more work than just updating the reader.

This reasoning is solid but I think that it still falls short of
justification of avoidance.
I can think of a lot of common cases which show number one isn't correct. I
think the best case would be for doc strings. It would be a lot nicer to
write \[func] each instead of \\[func].
Number two I disagree with on the grounds that I just don't think it's the
case. For example, I do not think escaped parens appear significantly more
than non-espaced parens, especially when it comes to writing major modes.
Additionally, because number one isn't really the case, this reasoning
doesn't work out entirely either.

Number three is just hogwash, because the "it would require more work than
that" argument only works if the additional work is to make the current
code handle old cases that have somehow become harder to handle. And this
isn't the case. Sure, there will be come cases where old code cannot handle
raw strings properly. But people can just file a bug report.

-Matt


On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com> wrote:

> Matthew> What if we assume that any string surrounded immediately by
> Matthew> parenthesis is a raw string literal? I'm pretty sure every
> Matthew> instance of ("...") is currently illegal, and it would be
> Matthew> almost certainly trivial to extend the Emacs' lexer/parser to
> Matthew> support it. I can do it myself if everyone thinks this is a
> Matthew> good idea.
>
> That kind of thing is valid in quoted contexts though.
>
> (defvar whatever '("hi"))
>
> FWIW there was a previous discussion about raw strings:
>
> http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/152132
>
> I think this killed the idea:
>
> http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/152155
>
> Tom
>