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White-Space Characters in Siebel eScript


White-space characters (space, tab, carriage-return, and newline) govern the spacing and placement of text. White space makes code more readable for the users, but the Siebel eScript interpreter ignores it.

Lines of script end with a carriage-return character, and each line is usually a separate statement. (Technically, in many editors, lines end with a carriage-return and linefeed pair, "\r\n".) Because the Siebel eScript interpreter usually sees one or more white-space characters between identifiers as simply white space, the following Siebel eScript statements are equivalent to one another:

var x=a+b
var x = a + b
var x =     a     +     b
var x = a+
        b

White space separates identifiers into separate entities. For example, ab is one variable name, and a b is two. Thus, the fragment

var ab = 2

is valid, but

var a b = 2

is not.

Many programmers use spaces and not tabs, because tab size settings vary from editor to editor and programmer to programmer. If programmers use only spaces, the format of a script appears the same on every editor.

CAUTION:  Siebel eScript treats white space in string literals differently from other white space. In particular, placing a line break within a string causes the Siebel eScript interpreter to treat the two lines as separate statements, both of which contain errors because they are incomplete. To avoid this problem, either keep string literals on a single line or create separate strings and associate them with the string concatenation operator.

For example:

var Gettysburg = "Fourscore and seven years ago, " +
"our fathers brought forth on this continent a " +
"new nation.";

For more information about string concatenation, read String Concatenation Operator in Siebel eScript.

Siebel eScript Language Reference