python - How to write very long string that conforms with PEP8 and prevent E501

Question

As PEP8 suggests keeping below the 80 column rule for your python program, how can I abide to that with long strings, i.e.

s = "this is my really, really, really, really, really, really, really long string that I'd like to shorten."

How would I go about expanding this to the following line, i.e.

s = "this is my really, really, really, really, really, really" + 
    "really long string that I'd like to shorten."

Answer 1

Since neighboring string constants are automatically concatenated, you can code it like this:

s = ("this is my really, really, really, really, really, really, "  
     "really long string that I'd like to shorten.")

Note no plus sign, and I added the extra comma and space that follows the formatting of your example.

Personally I don't like the backslashes, and I recall reading somewhere that its use is actually deprecated in favor of this form which is more explicit. Remember "Explicit is better than implicit."

I consider the backslash to be less clear and less useful because this is actually escaping the newline character. It's not possible to put a line end comment after it if one should be necessary. It is possible to do this with concatenated string constants:

s = ("this is my really, really, really, really, really, really, " # comments ok
     "really long string that I'd like to shorten.")

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I used a Google search of "python line length" which returns the PEP8 link as the first result, but also links to another good StackOverflow post on this topic: "Why should Python PEP-8 specify a maximum line length of 79 characters?"

Another good search phrase would be "python line continuation".