Re: documenting Unix command lines; more than one line

["Stephen D. Martin" <smartin -at- RC -dot- GC -dot- CA>]

Alexia Prendergast wrote:

> Yes, I'm aware of that -- but that wasn't the original question.
> The question was how to format one line that the user enters
> at once, not break it up into several lines for the user to enter
> one-at-a-time. (At least, that was my understanding, but I could
> very well have misunderstood ;-)

Regardless of the question I think indenting is superior to the
backslash.  The Unix "power user" (synonym for geek?), shouldn't need
the manual at all (grin), or at least should be able to recognize that
the second line of text is not a distinct command line (especially with
all that white space ahead of it).

One should also think of the non-power user, the poor smuck who'll end
up typing in that backslash, and who'll end up getting an
incomprehensible error message.  Assuming that Jen and Eric User do try
to type the indented line as a distinct command, they are more likely to
get a helpful error message.

Cheers!

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