n00b question on spacing

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2013 17:48:54 -0400, Ray Cote wrote:

> Also remember when entering long lines of text that strings concatenate
> within parenthesis. So,
> ("a, b, c"
> "d, e, f"
> "g, h, i")
> 
> Is the same as ("a, b, cd, e, fg, h, i")


Technically, you don't need the parentheses. You can also use backslash 
to continue the lines:


s = "a, b, c, " \
    "d, e, f, " \
    "g, h, i"
assert s == "a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i"


Or, if the strings are small enough, fit them on one line:

s = "a" "b" "c"

This *implicit concatenation* only works with string literals, not 
variables, but it works with any sort of quoting style:

s = "-'-" '-"-' r"\a\b"
assert s == "-'--\"-\\a\\b"


Like most such features, a little goes a long way. Don't over do it, it 
is quite possible to end up with an unreadable mess if you overuse it.



-- 
Steven