Python style - line continuation with strings

Question

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I ve gotten around this with   mystr       join            Why  hello there             wonderful stackoverflow people       in the past  It s not perfect  but it works nicely for very long strings that need to not have line breaks in them

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

This is a pretty clean way to do it   myStr     firstPartOfMyString             secondPartOfMyString             thirdPartOfMyString

User · Answer

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

[python] Python style - line continuation with strings?

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