UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Below an example of what I mean. The first attempt does what I want; the second doesn't, because bash assumes a line break means the end of an individual "command unix". Is there some way that I can convince bash to parse out, eg, to the closing parenthesis?

I'm thinking this would allow for neater looking scripts, specially if there are a lot of obscure parameters being passed in with hyphens.

Thanks!

Code:

$ls -l #l flag gives more output
insgesamt 4
drwxr-xr-x  2 hartmann users 144 2006-06-07 14:57 a
drwxr-xr-x  2 hartmann users 144 2006-06-07 14:57 b
-rwxr--r--  1 hartmann users 546 2006-06-07 15:01 diffem.pl
$( ls
> -l # l flag gives more output
> )
a  b  diffem.pl
bash: -l: command not found
$

Use a backslash for line continuation:

Code:

ls \
-l