Multi-Line Literal Strings

A string wrapped by a pair of back-tick (`) characters is interpreted literally.

This means that every single character that lies between the two back-ticks is taken verbatim.

This include new-lines, whitespaces, escape characters etc.

let x = `hello, world! "\t\x42"
  hello world again! 'x'
     this is the last time!!! `;

// The above is the same as:
let x = "hello, world! \"\\t\\x42\"\n  hello world again! 'x'\n     this is the last time!!! ";

If a back-tick (`) appears at the end of a line, then it is understood that the entire text block starts from the next line; the starting new-line character is stripped.

let x = `
        hello, world! "\t\x42"
  hello world again! 'x'
     this is the last time!!!
`;

// The above is the same as:
let x = "        hello, world! \"\\t\\x42\"\n  hello world again! 'x'\n     this is the last time!!!\n";

To actually put a back-tick (`) character inside a multi-line literal string, use two back-ticks together (i.e. ``).

let x = `I have a quote " as well as a back-tick `` here.`;

// The above is the same as:
let x = "I have a quote \" as well as a back-tick ` here.";

String Interpolation

`Interpolations start with "`
      + "${"
      + `" and end with }.`

Multi-line literal strings support string interpolation wrapped in ${ … }.

${ … } acts as a statements block and can contain anything that is allowed within a statements block, including another interpolated string! The last result of the block is taken as the value for interpolation.

Rhai uses to_string to convert any value into a string, then physically joins all the sub-strings together.

For convenience, if any interpolated value is a BLOB, however, it is automatically treated as a UTF-8 encoded string. That is because it is rarely useful to interpolate a BLOB into a string, but extremely useful to be able to directly manipulate UTF-8 encoded text.

let x = 42;
let y = 123;

let s = `x = ${x} and y = ${y}.`;                   // <- interpolated string

let s = ("x = " + {x} + " and y = " + {y} + ".");   // <- de-sugars to this

s == "x = 42 and y = 123.";

let s = `
Undeniable logic:
1) Hello, ${let w = `${x} world`; if x > 1 { w += "s" } w}!
2) If ${y} > ${x} then it is ${y > x}!
`;

s == "Undeniable logic:\n1) Hello, 42 worlds!\n2) If 123 > 42 then it is true!\n";

let blob = blob(3, 0x21);

print(blob);                            // prints [212121]

print(`Data: ${blob}`);                 // prints "Data: !!!"
                                        // BLOB is treated as UTF-8 encoded string

print(`Data: ${blob.to_string()}`);     // prints "Data: [212121]"