Ruby and JavaScript are a bit different. In Ruby, once you reach the end of a line, it is unambiguous whether the line is complete. You don't need to scan the

Ruby and JavaScript are a bit different. In Ruby, once you reach the end of a line, it is unambiguous whether the line is complete. You don't need to scan the next line to figure it out. Ruby does support a line continuation character if the line is complete, but you want to continue it anyway. foo = Struct.new(:bar).new("HI") puts foo \ .bar So in Ruby, the rule is: if you get to the end of a line and the expression is complete, the expression is finished. Otherwise, continue on the next line. This is really nice for human-readability (and as a side effect, pasting code into IRB).