Python, are you ill?

[Nicolas Dandrimont]

* wxPythoner at gmail.com <wxPythoner at gmail.com> [2008-05-10 13:59:37 -0700]:

> If you are in the interactive prompt of the Python interpreter and you
> do this
> 
> print """Testing\"""   or   print '''Testing\'''
> 
> you get three dots [...] as if Python expects a code block. If you
> press Enter, you get three dots again, and again, and again... You
> can't get out of the code block with pressing the Enter key;

That is because Python expects you to end the triple-quoted string with
three unescaped quotes.

> you have to press Ctrl+Z (if you're in Linux) in order to get out of that code
> block, which then throws you back to the Linux command line, but
> before that it prints this line
> 
> [1]+  Stopped                 python
> 

That ^Z just suspends your Python interpreter. It has become a job you can
now bring to foreground again with "fg". (but it's a feature of your
shell, not of Python)

> 
> If you do
> 
> print "Testing\"   or   print 'Testing\'
> 
> you get an error, but not of you use the triple quotes. Is that a bug
> in the interpreter perhaps?

The fact is, that triple-quoted strings can span on multiple lines, and
that single-quoted strings cannot (without the line ending with a "\").
So no, it's not a bug in the interpreter.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Dandrimont

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