* Added a new kind of multi-line string literal delimited by two

  single quotes.  Example (from NixOS):

    job = ''
      start on network-interfaces

      start script

        rm -f /var/run/opengl-driver
        ${if videoDriver == "nvidia"        
          then "ln -sf ${nvidiaDrivers} /var/run/opengl-driver"
          else if cfg.driSupport
          then "ln -sf ${mesa} /var/run/opengl-driver"
          else ""
        }

        rm -f /var/log/slim.log

      end script
    '';

  This style has two big advantages:

  - \, ' and " aren't special, only '' and ${.  So you get a lot less
    escaping in shell scripts / configuration files in Nixpkgs/NixOS.
    The delimiter '' is rare in scripts (and can usually be written as
    "").  ${ is also fairly rare.

    Other delimiters such as <<...>>, {{...}} and <|...|> were also
    considered but this one appears to have the fewest drawbacks
    (thanks Martin).

  - Indentation is intelligently stripped so that multi-line strings
    can follow the nesting structure of the containing Nix
    expression.  E.g. in the example above 6 spaces are stripped from
    the start of each line.  This prevents unnecessary indentation in
    generated files (which sometimes even breaks things).

  See tests/lang/eval-okay-ind-string.nix for some examples.

1 files changed, 107 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tests/lang/eval-okay-ind-string.nix b/tests/lang/eval-okay-ind-string.nix
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..7d5d61091588
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/lang/eval-okay-ind-string.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,107 @@
+let
+
+  s1 = ''
+    This is an indented multi-line string
+    literal.  An amount of whitespace at
+    the start of each line matching the minimum
+    indentation of all lines in the string
+    literal together will be removed.  Thus,
+    in this case four spaces will be
+    stripped from each line, even though
+      THIS LINE is indented six spaces.
+
+    Also, empty lines don't count in the
+    determination of the indentation level (the
+    previous empty line has indentation 0, but
+    it doesn't matter).
+  '';
+
+  s2 = ''  If the string starts with whitespace
+    followed by a newline, it's stripped, but
+    that's not the case here. Two spaces are
+    stripped because of the "  " at the start. 
+  '';
+
+  s3 = ''
+      This line is indented
+      a bit further.
+        ''; # indentation of last line doesn't count if it's empty
+
+  s4 = ''
+    Anti-quotations, like ${if true then "so" else "not so"}, are
+    also allowed.
+  '';
+
+  s5 = ''
+      The \ is not special here.
+    ' can be followed by any character except another ', e.g. 'x'.
+    Likewise for $, e.g. $$ or $varName.
+    But ' followed by ' is special, as is $ followed by {.
+    If you want them, use anti-quotations: ${"''"}, ${"\${"}.
+  '';
+
+  s6 = ''  
+    Tabs are not interpreted as whitespace (since we can't guess
+    what tab settings are intended), so don't use them.
+ 	This line starts with a space and a tab, so only one
+    space will be stripped from each line.
+  '';
+
+  s7 = ''
+    Also note that if the last line (just before the closing ' ')
+    consists only of whitespace, it's ignored.  But here there is
+    some non-whitespace stuff, so the line isn't removed. '';
+
+  s8 = ''    ${""}
+    This shows a hacky way to preserve an empty line after the start.
+    But there's no reason to do so: you could just repeat the empty
+    line.
+  '';
+
+  s9 = ''
+  ${""}  Similarly you can force an indentation level,
+    in this case to 2 spaces.  This works because the anti-quote
+    is significant (not whitespace).
+  '';
+
+  s10 = ''
+  '';
+
+  s11 = '''';
+
+  s12 = ''   '';
+
+  s13 = ''
+    start on network-interfaces
+
+    start script
+    
+      rm -f /var/run/opengl-driver
+      ${if true
+        then "ln -sf 123 /var/run/opengl-driver"
+        else if true
+        then "ln -sf 456 /var/run/opengl-driver"
+        else ""
+      }
+
+      rm -f /var/log/slim.log
+       
+    end script
+
+    env SLIM_CFGFILE=${"abc"}
+    env SLIM_THEMESDIR=${"def"}
+    env FONTCONFIG_FILE=/etc/fonts/fonts.conf  				# !!! cleanup
+    env XKB_BINDIR=${"foo"}/bin         				# Needed for the Xkb extension.
+    env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${"libX11"}/lib:${"libXext"}/lib:/usr/lib/          # related to xorg-sys-opengl - needed to load libglx for (AI)GLX support (for compiz)
+
+    ${if true
+      then "env XORG_DRI_DRIVER_PATH=${"nvidiaDrivers"}/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/"
+    else if true
+      then "env XORG_DRI_DRIVER_PATH=${"mesa"}/lib/modules/dri"
+      else ""
+    } 
+
+    exec ${"slim"}/bin/slim
+  '';
+
+in s1 + s2 + s3 + s4 + s5 + s6 + s7 + s8 + s9 + s10 + s11 + s12 + s13