Currently, AL only supports single-line string literals, which makes working with multiline-strings a bit cumbersome.

// works:

myText := 'Hello';



// error:

myText := '

  Hello

';

So, if you want to have long strings or strings like JSON/XML span multiple lines your only option is concatenation:

// before:

myText := '{ "foo": 1, "bar": 2 }';



// after:

myText := '{' + 

  '"foo": 1,' +

  '"bar": 2' +

'}';



// Note, you also have to concat Newline endings and indentation/tab characters,

//  (if you want the string to also include those)

NL[1] := 13;

NL[2] := 10;

TB[1] := 9;

myText := '' + NL + 

  TB + '{' + NL + 

  TB + TB + '"foo": 1,' + NL + 

  TB + TB + '"bar": 2' + NL + 

  TB + '}' + NL + 

'';



// Imagine if our json has more properties :)

Other programming languages tend to have a multline string support, so could AL add something similar?

// Javascript/Typescript:

myText := `

  {

    "foo": 1,

    "bar": 2

  }

`;



// Dotnet (personally, I don't like the quotation escapes though):

myText := @"

  {

    ""foo"": 1,

    ""bar"": 2

  }

";



// Python uses triple-quotes (single or double) for opening/closing

// PHP uses double vs. single quotes

// C++ 11 supports raw string e.g. in the format: R""""(YourStringGoesHere)"""

// Free-Pascal doesn't have it yet I believe but users seem to generally favor backticks

And just as a bonus, I think it would be a great addition to throw interpolation in there as well:

// before:

myText := StrSubstNo(`

  {

    "foo": %1,

    "bar": %2

  }

`, GetRandomNumber(), GetRandomNumber());



// after:

myText := `

  {

    "foo": ${GetRandomNumber()},

    "bar": ${GetRandomNumber()}

  }

`;

Making string literals more rich will make integrations more straight-forward, e.g. when doing JsonObject.ReadFrom where you already have the string you want to place in code, instead of using JsonObject.Add, it would make generation of files/requests easier, etc.

It would also just make these cases much more readable (and easier to share snippets between languages/platforms).