Daniel da Silva wrote:
On several occasions I have run into code that will do something like the following with a multiline string: [...] To me, this is rather ugly because it messes up the indentation of some_func(). Suppose we could have a multiline string, that when started on a line indented four spaces, ignores the first four spaces on each line of the literal when creating the actual string?
In this example, I will use four quotes to start such a string.
Please no. Three quotes is large enough. Also, four quotes currently is legal: it is a triple-quoted string that begins with a quotation mark. You would be changing that behaviour and likely breaking code. I don't think we need syntax for this, but if we do, I'd prefer to add a prefix similar to the r"" or u"" syntax. Perhaps w"" to normalise whitespace? But as I said, I don't think we need syntax for this. I'd be happy if textwrap.dedent() became a built-in string method. def some_func(): x, y = process_something() val = """ <xml> <myThing> <val>%s</val> <otherVal>%s</otherVal> </myThing> </xml> """.dedent() % (x, y) return val -- Steven