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

Carl M. Johnson cmjohnson.mailinglist at gmail.com
Sat Nov 6 00:48:49 CET 2010 
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 11/5/2010 10:45 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
>> I do use the textwrap.dedent workaround myself, but I think it is
>> sufficiently flawed for a proper fix to be worth considering:
>>
>> 1. It doesn't work for docstrings (as Tal pointed out)
>
> This does:
>
> def f(x):
>    "Am I a docstring\n"\
>    "even though I start in pieces?\n"\
>    "Oh, x is a dummy param\n"
>    pass
> print(f.__doc__)
>
> # prints 3 lines, but not without '\' escape at line ends

Can the parser be changed to do automagic joining on that the same way
that it auto joins ("a"

"b")? I can't imagine any scenario where anyone would rely on starting
the line after a docstring with a string literal, since the only
plausible run time effect it might have would be to intern some
strings for later. Even "string".method() wouldn't have any effect
without something like x = in front of.

-- Carl Johnson
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