3.9 Suppressing End of Line Markers

End of line markers can be suppressed by the @- sequence. A single occurrence of a @- sequence serves to suppress only the end of line marker following it and must appear exactly  before the end of line marker to be suppressed. No trailing spaces, @! comments, or any other characters are permitted between a @- sequence and the end of line that it is supposed to suppress. The @- sequence is useful for constructing long output lines without them having to appear in the input. It can also be used in the same way as the @+ was used in the previous section to assist in exposing the structure of output text without affecting the output text itself. Finally, it is invaluable for suppressing the EOL after the opening macro text @{ construct. For example:

@$@<Walrus@>@{@-
I am the walrus!@}

is equivalent to

@$@<Walrus@>@{I am the walrus!@}

The comment construct (@!) can also be used to suppress end of lines. However, the @- construct should be preferred for this purpose as it makes explicit the programmer's intent to suppress the end of line.