</sect2>
<sect2><title>Input syntax</title>
- <para>All special processing is triggered by the
- <literal>#</literal> character placed outside Haskell comments
- and string literals. To output a literal <literal>#</literal>,
- write it twice: <literal>##</literal>.</para>
-
- <para>Otherwise <literal>#</literal> is followed by optional
- spaces and tabs, an alphanumeric key that describes the
- kind of processing, and its arguments. Arguments look
- like C expressions separated by commas and extend up to the
- nearest unmatched <literal>)</literal>, <literal>]</literal>,
- or <literal>}</literal>, or to the end of line outside any
- <literal>() [] {} '' "" /* */</literal>. Any character may be
- preceded by a backslash and will not be treated specially.</para>
+ <para>All special processing is triggered by
+ the <literal>#</literal> operator. To output
+ a literal <literal>#</literal>, write it twice:
+ <literal>##</literal>. Inside string literals and comments
+ <literal>#</literal> characters are not processed.</para>
+
+ <para>A <literal>#</literal> is followed by optional
+ spaces and tabs, an alphanumeric keyword that describes
+ the kind of processing, and its arguments. Arguments look
+ like C expressions separated by commas (they are not
+ written inside parens). They extend up to the nearest
+ unmatched <literal>)</literal>, <literal>]</literal> or
+ <literal>}</literal>, or to the end of line if it occurs outside
+ any <literal>() [] {} '' "" /**/</literal> and is not preceded
+ by a backslash. Backslash-newline pairs are stripped.</para>
<para>In addition <literal>#{stuff}</literal> is equivalent
to <literal>#stuff</literal> except that it's self-delimited
and thus needs not to be placed at the end of line or in some
brackets.</para>
- <para>Meanings of specific keys:</para>
+ <para>Meanings of specific keywords:</para>
<variablelist>