[Python-ideas] Multi-line strings that respect indentation

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Jared Grubb writes:

 > The easiest would be to do the equivalent of dedent and take the
 > longest common whitespace length. But, the purist in me would kinda
 > hope that if, for example, the code was indented to column 8 but
 > the text was all at column 12, that the resulting string would have
 > 4 leading spaces on each line.

-1

You could probably come up with rules to get this right for the
parser, but how can it possibly guess exactly what any given user
means by

    def amethod (self):
        self.bmethod_has_fleece_as_white_as_snow("""\
            Mary had a little lamb
            little lamb
            little lamb
            The lamb may be a little small
            But this poem is just plain lame.""")

Is that supposed to be flush left, indented 4 spaces, indented 8
spaces, or indented 12 spaces?

I think the dedent rule (longest common whitespace prefix) makes the
most sense.