How can I do a line break (line continuation) in Python?

Posted By: Ray Vega

I have a long line of code that I want to break up among multiple lines. What do I use and what is the syntax?

For example, adding a bunch of strings,

e = 'a' + 'b' + 'c' + 'd'

and have it in two lines like this:

e = 'a' + 'b' +
    'c' + 'd'

Solution

What is the line? You can just have arguments on the next line without any problems:

a = dostuff(blahblah1, blahblah2, blahblah3, blahblah4, blahblah5, 
            blahblah6, blahblah7)

Otherwise you can do something like this:

if (a == True and
    b == False):

or with explicit line break:

if a == True and 
   b == False:

Check the style guide for more information.

Using parentheses, your example can be written over multiple lines:

a = ('1' + '2' + '3' +
    '4' + '5')

The same effect can be obtained using explicit line break:

a = '1' + '2' + '3' + 
    '4' + '5'

Note that the style guide says that using the implicit continuation with parentheses is preferred, but in this particular case just adding parentheses around your expression is probably the wrong way to go.

Answered By: Harley

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