Python style - line continuation with strings? [duplicate]
In trying to obey the python style rules, I've set my editors to a max of 79 cols.
In the PEP, it recommends using python's implied continuation within brackets, parentheses and braces. However, when dealing with strings when I hit the col limit, it gets a little weird.
For instance, trying to use a multiline
mystr = """Why, hello there
wonderful stackoverflow people!"""
Will return
"Why, hello there\nwonderful stackoverflow people!"
This works:
mystr = "Why, hello there \
wonderful stackoverflow people!"
Since it returns this:
"Why, hello there wonderful stackoverflow people!"
But, when the statement is indented a few blocks in, this looks weird:
do stuff:
and more stuff:
and even some more stuff:
mystr = "Why, hello there \
wonderful stackoverflow people!"
If you try and indent the second line:
do stuff:
and more stuff:
and even some more stuff:
mystr = "Why, hello there \
wonderful stackoverflow people!"
Your string ends up as:
"Why, hello there wonderful stackoverflow people!"
The only way I've found to get around this is:
do stuff:
and more stuff:
and even some more stuff:
mystr = "Why, hello there" \
"wonderful stackoverflow people!"
Which I like better, but is also somewhat uneasy on the eyes, as it looks like there is a string just sitting in the middle of nowhere. This will produce the proper:
"Why, hello there wonderful stackoverflow people!"
So, my question is - what are some people's recommendations on how to do this and is there something I'm missing in the style guide that does show how I should be doing this?
Thanks.
Solution 1:
Since adjacent string literals are automatically joint into a single string, you can just use the implied line continuation inside parentheses as recommended by PEP 8:
print("Why, hello there wonderful "
"stackoverflow people!")
Solution 2:
Just pointing out that it is use of parentheses that invokes auto-concatenation. That's fine if you happen to already be using them in the statement. Otherwise, I would just use '\' rather than inserting parentheses (which is what most IDEs do for you automatically). The indent should align the string continuation so it is PEP8 compliant. E.g.:
my_string = "The quick brown dog " \
"jumped over the lazy fox"
Solution 3:
Another possibility is to use the textwrap module. This also avoids the problem of "string just sitting in the middle of nowhere" as mentioned in the question.
import textwrap
mystr = """\
Why, hello there
wonderful stackoverfow people"""
print (textwrap.fill(textwrap.dedent(mystr)))
Solution 4:
This is a pretty clean way to do it:
myStr = ("firstPartOfMyString"+
"secondPartOfMyString"+
"thirdPartOfMyString")