### 10.10 Continuation Lines ¶

In the Octave language, most statements end with a newline character and you must tell Octave to ignore the newline character in order to continue a statement from one line to the next. Lines that end with the characters `...` are joined with the following line before they are divided into tokens by Octave’s parser. For example, the lines

    x = long_variable_name ...
        + longer_variable_name ...
        - 42

form a single statement.

Any text between the continuation marker and the newline character is ignored. For example, the statement

    x = long_variable_name ...    # comment one
        + longer_variable_name ...comment two
        - 42                      # last comment

is equivalent to the one shown above.

Inside double-quoted string constants, the character `\` has to be used as continuation marker. The `\` must appear at the end of the line just before the newline character:

    s = "This text starts in the first line \
    and is continued in the second line."

Input that occurs inside parentheses can be continued to the next line without having to use a continuation marker. For example, it is possible to write statements like

    if (fine_dining_destination == on_a_boat
        || fine_dining_destination == on_a_train)
      seuss (i, will, not, eat, them, sam, i, am, i,
             will, not, eat, green, eggs, and, ham);
    endif

without having to add to the clutter with continuation markers.