Proper indentation for Python multiline strings

Question

What is the proper indentation for Python multiline strings within a function       def method            string      line one line two line three      or      def method            string      line one         line two         line three      or something else   It looks kind of weird to have the string hanging outside the function in the first example

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The first option is the good one - with indentation included   It is in python style - provides readability for the code   To display it properly   print string lstrip

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For strings you can just after process the string  For docstrings you need to after process the function instead  Here is a solution for both that is still readable   class Lstrip object       def   rsub   self  other           import re         return re sub    n       re sub   n        re sub   n s      n   other     msg             Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  sed do eiusmod       tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua  Ut enim ad minim       veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea       commodo consequat  Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate       velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur  Excepteur sint occaecat       cupidatat non proident  sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id       est laborum            - Lstrip    print msg  def lstrip docstring func       func   doc     func   doc   - Lstrip       return func   lstrip docstring def foo                Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  sed do eiusmod     tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua  Ut enim ad minim     veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea     commodo consequat  Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate     velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur  Excepteur sint occaecat     cupidatat non proident  sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id     est laborum              pass   print foo   doc

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The textwrap dedent function allows one to start with correct indentation in the source  and then strip it from the text before use   The trade-off  as noted by some others  is that this is an extra function call on the literal  take this into account when deciding where to place these literals in your code   import textwrap  def frobnicate param           Frobnicate the scrognate param           The Weebly-Ruckford algorithm is employed to frobnicate         the scrognate to within an inch of its life                   prepare the comfy chair param      log message   textwrap dedent                  Prepare to frobnicate              Here it comes                    Any moment now              And  Frobnicate          weebly param  log message      ruckford param    The trailing   in the log message literal is to ensure that line break isn t in the literal  that way  the literal doesn t start with a blank line  and instead starts with the next full line   The return value from textwrap dedent is the input string with all common leading whitespace indentation removed on each line of the string  So the above log message value will be   Prepare to frobnicate  Here it comes        Any moment now  And  Frobnicate

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My two cents  escape the end of line to get the indents   def foo        return     n               freq     n               temp     n  format  time  freq  temp

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One option which seems to missing from the other answers  only mentioned deep down in a comment by naxa  is the following   def foo        string     line one n             Add  n in the string                line two     n         Add   n  after the string                line three n     This will allow proper aligning  join the lines implicitly  and still keep the line shift which  for me  is one of the reasons why I would like to use multiline strings anyway   It doesn t require any postprocessing  but you need to manually add the  n at any given place that you want the line to end  Either inline or as a separate string after  The latter is easier to copy-paste in

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If you want a quick amp easy solution and save yourself from typing newlines  you could opt for a list instead  e g    def func  args    kwargs       string     n  join            first line of very long string and            second line of the same long thing and            third line of                and so on                     print string      return

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I came here looking for a simple 1-liner to remove correct the identation level of the docstring for printing  without making it look untidy   for example by making it  hang outside the function  within the script   Here s what I ended up doing    import string def myfunction                 line 1 of docstring     line 2 of docstring     line 3 of docstring     print str string replace myfunction   doc     n t    n    1      Obviously  if you re indenting with spaces  e g  4  rather than the tab key use something like this instead    print str string replace myfunction   doc     n        n    1     And you don t need to remove the first character if you like your docstrings to look like this instead          line 1 of docstring     line 2 of docstring     line 3 of docstring     print string replace myfunction   doc     n t    n

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Use inspect cleandoc like so   def method        string   inspect cleandoc             line one         line two         line three       Relative indentation will be maintained as expected  As commented below  if you want to keep preceding empty lines  use textwrap dedent  However that also keeps the first line break      Note  It s good practice to indent logical blocks of code under its related context to clarify the structure  E g  the multi-line string belonging to the variable string

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You probably want to line up with the      def foo        string      line one              line two              line three      Since the newlines and spaces are included in the string itself  you will have to postprocess it  If you don t want to do that and you have a whole lot of text  you might want to store it separately in a text file  If a text file does not work well for your application and you don t want to postprocess  I d probably go with  def foo        string     this is an                  implicitly joined                  string     If you want to postprocess a multiline string to trim out the parts you don t need  you should consider the textwrap module or the technique for postprocessing docstrings presented in PEP 257   def trim docstring       if not docstring          return          Convert tabs to spaces  following the normal Python rules        and split into a list of lines      lines   docstring expandtabs   splitlines         Determine minimum indentation  first line doesn t count       indent   sys maxint     for line in lines 1            stripped   line lstrip           if stripped              indent   min indent  len line  - len stripped         Remove indentation  first line is special       trimmed    lines 0  strip        if indent  lt  sys maxint          for line in lines 1                trimmed append line indent   rstrip          Strip off trailing and leading blank lines      while trimmed and not trimmed -1           trimmed pop       while trimmed and not trimmed 0           trimmed pop 0        Return a single string      return   n  join trimmed

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It depends on how you want the text to display  If you want it all to be left-aligned then either format it as in the first snippet or iterate through the lines left-trimming all the space

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I prefer      def method            string          line one line two line three        or      def method            string        line one line two line three

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You can use this function trim indent   import re   def trim indent s  str       s   re sub r   n        s      s   re sub r  n         s      spaces   re findall r       s  flags re MULTILINE      if len spaces   gt  0 and len re findall r     s    s  flags re MULTILINE      0          s   re sub r   s     min spaces        s  flags re MULTILINE      return s   print trim indent               line one             line two                 line three             line two         line one           Result       line one     line two         line three     line two line one

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I m having a similar issue  code got really unreadable using multilines  I came out with something like  print    aaaa          bbb        yes  at beginning could look terrible but the embedded syntax was quite complex and adding something at the end  like   n    was not a solution

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Some more options   In Ipython with pylab enabled  dedent is already in the namespace   I checked and it is from matplotlib   Or it can be imported with   from matplotlib cbook import dedent   In documentation it states that it is faster than the textwrap equivalent one and in my tests in ipython it is indeed 3 times faster on average with my quick tests    It also has the benefit that it discards any leading blank lines this allows you to be flexible in how you construct the string       line 1 of string line 2 of string           line 1 of string line 2 of string         line 1 of string line 2 of string       Using the matplotlib dedent on these three examples will give the same sensible result   The textwrap dedent function will have a leading blank line with 1st example   Obvious disadvantage is that textwrap is in standard library while matplotlib is external module    Some tradeoffs here    the dedent functions make your code more readable where the strings get defined  but require processing later to get the string in usable format   In docstrings it is obvious that you should use correct indentation as most uses of the docstring will do the required processing   When I need a non long string in my code I find the following admittedly ugly code where I let the long string drop out of the enclosing indentation   Definitely fails on  Beautiful is better than ugly    but one could argue that it is simpler and more explicit than the dedent alternative   def example        long string        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisicing elit  sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua  Ut enim ad minim veniam  quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip           return long string  print example

[python] Proper indentation for Python multiline strings

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