This section presents information on the mechanics of writing code, including breaking and combining lines of code and adding comments to your code.

A long statement can be broken into multiple lines using the line-continuation character (a space followed by an underscore). Using this character can make your code easier to read, both online and when printed. The following code is broken into three lines with _ (line-continuation characters, that is, underscores):

You can't follow a line-continuation character with any other character (not even a space character or a comment) on the same line. There are also some restrictions on where you can break lines. For example, you cannot break a line in the middle of an argument or keyword. However, you can break an argument list, provided the individual arguments are intact.

Unlike VBScript, in mrScriptBasic it is not possible to combine multiple statements on a single line. Similarly, you cannot combine a GoTo label and a statement on one line. Combining statements on a single line is not supported because it can cause problems for GUI tools that use mrScriptBasic.

Single-line string literals must be enclosed in double quotation marks and can contain single quotation marks. To include a double quotation mark in a string literal, insert two double quotation marks. For example:

You define a multiline string literal by enclosing it within "! and !" characters, as shown in the following example:

"! must be followed by a new line and !" must be preceded by a new line.

You can include double quotation marks and exclamation points in the string literal. For example:

Use the preceding method to define a string literal only if you want newline characters within the value of the string. If you want to define a string literal over multiple lines only because you want to make your script easier to read, you should use the backslash (\) character. For example:

When you execute your script, the value of this string will be exactly the same as if you had defined it as a single-line string literal without the two backslash characters.

Use the comment symbol (') to put remarks in your script code to make it easier to understand. For example:

Comments can follow a statement on the same line or can occupy an entire line. Both are illustrated in the preceding example. Comments cannot follow a line-continuation character on the same line.

In addition to the standard VBScript comments, block comments can be used in mrScriptBasic. Block comments are denoted by using '! (block comment start characters) and !' (block comment end characters). For example: