patch: C-style string lexing

["Eric Tetz" <erictetz@...>]

I just posted a small patch to the wiki that allows C-style string lexing,
where string literals separated by whitespace are collected as a single
string.  I've always appreciated that in C, and miss it when using languages
that don't lex strings that way (lika Java or Lua).

For instance, if you have a code block like:

   if something then
      for k,v in pairs(foo) do
         if v then
            bar()
         else
            io.write "This is a big chunk of text "
                     "that for whatever reason (typically "
                     "readability) is broken into multiple "
                     "lines in the source code.\n"
         end
      end

You can format strings this way now using concatenation, but that has
performance costs. Doing it during lexing is essentially free.

It's also a useful alternative to long strings in some situations because:
   1) it allows you to use regular string escape patterns, so you can embed
      control characters, control EOL format, etc.
   2) it doesn't force you to left-justify the text in your source (which
      usually messes up your indentation ^_^)

Anyway, I only wanted to mention it here because it would be nice to see it in
the Lua core.  It's a minimal change to the lexer with no real downside (as far
as I can tell). It just gives you a bit more freedom in how you can
format string
literals.

Patch is here (scroll to bottom):
http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaPowerPatches

Cheers,
Eric