Laurent Pointal wrote: > Laurent Pointal wrote: >> Take care of indent: >> >> def f(x): >> a = 5 >> """an correctly indented expression to be >> inside the function""" >> return a * x > > Here only the first indent of """ at beginning of the string to be aligned > to function bloc is important, remaining content of the string can be > indented or not.
I must strongly object and recommend against getting accustomed to the suggested use of multi-line string literals. First of all, it is too easy to produce invalid code this way. Also, standalone multi-line string literals in Python code serve a specific purpose when at the beginning of a function, method or class clock: they constitute *docstrings”, setting the respective object’s “__doc__” attribute: >>> def f(x): ... """Returns a multiple of 5""" ... a = 5 ... return a * x ... >>> print(f.__doc__) Returns a multiple of 5 This means that different to real comments, the content of string literals is *parsed*. You do not want to waste the time of the compiler compiling code that serves no purpose; particularly not in a language like Python where code is JIT-compiled by default. Not any less important: Using standalone multi-line string literals in any other way is syntactically correct indeed, but makes the code harder to read. Keep in mind that code may be written only once, but read many times by other people during its lifetime. It is important to write code so that it is easy to read, so that it can be easily reused and adapted by oneself and others (a month, a year later). If you want to comment your code, then by all means do so using docstrings and *real* comments. IDEs like PyDev support you there. That way also the syntax highlighting will be correct. And with real comments, the Python compiler does not care about the indentation. As to where you should put comments, I recommend in general, in all programming languages, if possible to put the comments on their own line, *before* the statement that they are describing, and using the same indentation, preferably preceded by an empty line (so that the comment and the code it documents stand out). <https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/controlflow.html#documentation-strings> <https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#line-structure> -- PointedEars Twitter: @PointedEars2 Please do not cc me. / Bitte keine Kopien per E-Mail. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
