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#### 4.1.4 Continuation Lines and Filling

In IDL, a newline character terminates a statement unless preceded by a ‘`$`’. If you would like to start a continuation line, use `M-RET`, which calls the command `idlwave-split-line`. It inserts the continuation character ‘`$`’, terminates the line and indents the new line. The command `M-RET` can also be invoked inside a string to split it at that point, in which case the ‘`+`’ concatenation operator is used.

When filling comment paragraphs, IDLWAVE overloads the normal filling functions and uses a function which creates the hanging paragraphs customary in IDL routine headers. When `auto-fill-mode` is turned on (toggle with `C-c C-a`), comments will be auto-filled. If the first line of a paragraph contains a match for `idlwave-hang-indent-regexp` (a dash-space by default), subsequent lines are positioned to line up after it, as in the following example.

    ;=================================
    ; x - an array containing
    ;     lots of interesting numbers.
    ;
    ; y - another variable where
    ;     a hanging paragraph is used
    ;     to describe it.
    ;=================================

You can also refill a comment at any time paragraph with `M-q`. Comment delimiting lines as in the above example, consisting of one or more ‘`;`’ followed by one or more of the characters ‘`+=-_*`’, are kept in place, as is.

User Option: idlwave-fill-comment-line-only (`t`)

  Non-`nil` means auto fill will only operate on comment lines.

User Option: idlwave-auto-fill-split-string (`t`)

  Non-`nil` means auto fill will split strings with the IDL ‘`+`’ operator.

User Option: idlwave-split-line-string (`t`)

  Non-`nil` means `idlwave-split-line` will split strings with ‘`+`’.

User Option: idlwave-hanging-indent (`t`)

  Non-`nil` means comment paragraphs are indented under the hanging indent given by `idlwave-hang-indent-regexp` match in the first line of the paragraph.

User Option: idlwave-hang-indent-regexp (`"- "`)

  Regular expression matching the position of the hanging indent in the first line of a comment paragraph.

User Option: idlwave-use-last-hang-indent (`nil`)

  Non-`nil` means use last match on line for `idlwave-indent-regexp`.

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