[erlang-questions] atoms with newlines

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 28/02/2014, at 2:44 AM, PAILLEAU Eric wrote:
> Maybe not very homogeneous...
> 
> By the way, I do not really see the need to include \n in atoms...

The current thread is about *NOT* including \n in atoms.

An atom in Erlang may be up to 255 characters long.
If you are trying to keep your source files to a reasonable
width limit, this means that

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA\
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA'

has to be broken up across multiple lines.

Except that you can't, because there is currently no way
NOT to include a newline in an atom literal.

There is also no Atom1 ++ Atom2.

The NAME_MAX limit is typically 255 on the machines I use.
Being able to write _any_ simple file name as an Erlang
atom is often handy.

>