[Python-Dev] Triple-quoted strings and indentation (original) (raw)

Andrew Durdin adurdin at gmail.com
Wed Jul 6 06:16:59 CEST 2005

In general, I find triple-quoted strings to be very handy, particularly for standalone scripts. However, the fact that they have to be written in the left-hand column to avoid leading whitespace really grates, particularly when they're nested within a block or two -- it's a wart:

try:
    options, args = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "cf:s")
except getopt.GetoptError:
    print """Usage: dostuff <options>

Options: -c - blah blah -f - do stuff with file "filename" -s - more blah"""

    sys.exit(1)

This really makes the code hard to read, as the indentation is all mixed up (visually).

I have written a patch that changes the way triple-quoted strings are scanned so that leading whitespace is ignored in much the same way that pep 257 handles it for docstrings. Largely this was for a learning experience in hacking the parser, but it would be very nice IMO if something of this sort could be implemented in a future version of Python. To this end, I have sketched out a draft PEP (which was itself a good learning exercise in thinking out the issues of such a change). Should I post it here for discussion?

Andrew

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list