Question

I enforce strictly 80 characters per line in my python codes, but occasionally I have to break a line of string into two as following

print time.strftime("%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S \
    %p",time.localtime(os.path.getmtime(fname)))

in which case the output will have extra spaces in front of the “AM/PM”, like

foo.dat was last modified: 01/10/2012 02:53:15                    AM

There are easy way to fix this, simply to either avoid cutting off strings, or allow long lines in this case, however, I am wondering if there are other more intrinsic ways to tackle this while allowing both str-cutting and line-breaking to happen. The second line is automatically indented by the editor, I don’t want to change that either. Thanks.

Answer 1

The recommended way to do this is to avoid using \ altogether by using parentheses instead. Also, use the fact that consecutive strings are concatenated into one string. For example:

print time.strftime(("%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S "
    "%p"), time.localtime(os.path.getmtime(fname)))