Sun Studio 12: C User's Guide

6.5.3 Logical Source Lines

In K&R C, backslash/new-line pairs were allowed only as a means to continue a directive, a string literal, or a character constant to the next line. ISO C extended the notion so that a backslash/new-line pair can continue anything to the next line. The result is a logical source line. Therefore, any code that relied on the separate recognition of tokens on either side of a backslash/new-line pair does not behave as expected.