continuation character in cron jobs

[David Liontooth <liontooth@cogweb.net>]

I'd like to use the continuation character \ in a cron job, but I get an
error when I do.

I use "crontab -e" to edit the crontab and have this sort of thing:

30 5 * * *      script varable variable \
variable-text

when I try to save, I get this:

crontab: installing new crontab
"/tmp/crontab.kZ7WHF/crontab":122: bad minute
errors in crontab file, can't install

Does anyone know if there's a way to get cron to accept a continuation
character?

This is Debian Sid's (vixie) cron 3.0pl1-100.

Cheers,
David