This is sometimes used with eval or old-style command substitution, and most
shells other than ash derivatives allow it.
It can also be used with scripts that violate POSIX's requirement on the
application that they end in a newline (scripts must be text files except
that line length is unlimited).
Example:
v=`cat <<EOF
foo
EOF`
echo $v
This commit does not add support for the similar construct with new-style
command substitution, like
v=$(cat <<EOF
foo
EOF)
This continues to require a newline after the terminator.