Geek asks and answers

Is there a clean way to write multi-line strings in Python?

This sounds like a novice question, but I never managed to write long lines in pure form in Python.

Here are 4 ways I have done this. None of them suit me.

def useless_func():
    # WRONG WAY A : string_A displays well but breaks the 80 char max PEP 8 recommandation
    string_A = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."

    # WRONG WAY B : string_B will create unwanted spaces between word 'sed' and 'do' when printed
    string_B = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed\
        do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."

    # WRONG WAY C : string_C displays well  but makes my code ugly because it breaks indentation
    string_C = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed\
do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua."

    # WRONG WAY D : string_D (triples quotes) has the same problem than string_B (unwanted spaces)
    string_D = '''Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed
        do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.'''

Did I miss something?

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4 answers

You can try:

string = "sdfsdfsdfsdfsdf" \
         "sdfsdfsdfsdfs"

And the result:

>>> string
'sdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfsdfs'

The same effect can be achieved by using paranthesis instead \, as @Nigel Tufnel noted in his decision.

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I would go with:

def pr():
    # parentheses are for grouping and (as a bonus) for a pretty indentation
    s = ("aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
         "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb")
    print s

To quote an informal introduction to Python :

; = '' 'A'; , .

>>> s = 'a' 'b'
>>> s
'ab'
>>> s = 'a''b' # space is not necessary
>>> s
'ab'

: - :

>>> import dis
>>> dis.dis(pr)

 0 LOAD_CONST               1 ('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb')

, C:

// prints "hello world"
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  printf("hello" " world");
  return 0;
}
+13

How to use double or single triple quote:

>>> string_A = """Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
... this is also my content
... this is also my content
... this is also my content"""
>>>
>>> print string_A
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
this is also my content
this is also my content
this is also my content
>>>
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I think it comes down to how much screen real estate is provided to you.

You can use concatenation.

string_a = "this is my content"
string_a += "this is also my content"
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