I7 : Little strange error I felt like sharing

Authoring Inform 7
1

[code]Open Field is a room.

Instead of jumping:
Say “‘[one of]Cats are cool.[or]I simply adore cats.[purely at random]’”;[/code]

Now, what is that line break doing right after [purely at random]?

2

Text ending in certain punctuation (. ! ?) has an implicit line break, and there’s an implicit paragraph break at the end of a rule. See §5.8.

Try moving the period out of the “one of… purely at random” construct.

Open Field is a room.

Instead of jumping:
	Say "'[one of]Cats are cool[or]I simply adore cats[purely at random].'";

Edit: More explanation:

The intervening conditionals cause the pieces of the say statement to be treated as if they were in separate say statements.

The original version translates like this:

Instead of jumping:
	say "'";
	let n be a random number between 1 and 2;
	if n is 1:
		say "Cats are cool.";
	otherwise:
		say "I simply adore cats.";
	say "'";

While the revised version is like this:

Instead of jumping:
	say "'";
	let n be a random number between 1 and 2;
	if n is 1:
		say "Cats are cool";
	otherwise:
		say "I simply adore cats";
	say ".'";
3

Thanks for the refined explanation - this really good to know! I was initially thinking of this as just a little strange error. But to me, it’s big news that punctation inside a [one of] block can trigger line breaks.