A desperate lunge for on-topic-ness

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:06:19 -0400, Zero Piraeus wrote:

> What are people's preferred strategies for dealing with lines that go
> over 79 characters? A few I can think of off the bat:
> 
> 1. Say "screw it" and go past 79, PEP8 be damned.

I've been burnt enough by word-wrapping in editors that don't handle word-
wrapping that well that it makes me really uncomfortable to go over 78-79 
characters, even by only 1 extra. So I don't like doing this.

Just about the only time I go over is if I have a comment that includes a 
URL with more than 78 characters. I hate breaking URLs more than I hate 
breaking the 79 character limit.


> 2. Say "screw it" and break the line using a backslash.

Low on my preference list, but occasionally.


> 3. Say "well, at least it's not a backslash" and break the line using
> parentheses.

I mostly do this. Since most lines include a bracket of some sort, I 
rarely need to add outer parentheses just for the purpose of line 
continuation.

some_variable = spam('x') + ham(
                    some_longer_variables, here_and_here, 
                    and_here_also)

I know PEP 8 says I should drop the final round bracket to the next line, 
but I don't normally like that.


> 4. Spend 45 minutes trying to think up shorter [but still sensible]
> variable names to make it fit.

Ha! Since most of my variable names are already relatively short, that's 
not often much help.


> 5. Perform an otherwise pointless assignment to a temp variable on the
> previous line to make it fit.

Hardly ever.

You missed one:

5a. Perform an assignment to a temp variable that you really should have 
done anyway, but reducing the number of characters in the line was the 
impetus that finally made you act.


> 6. Realise that if it's that long, it probably shouldn't have been a
> list comprehension in the first place.

What if it wasn't a list comp in the first place? :)

Refactoring code makes most long lines go away on their own.



-- 
Steven