On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 8:58 AM Soni L. <fakedme+py@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm having a really hard time seeing why that is either more readable, or easier to type than:
nicest = ("foo" " bar" " baz" ) (my prefered way these days)
I think you missed some \n's here.
indeed I did: nicest = ("foo\n" " bar\n" " baz\n" ) which I agree is not as nice, but still just as good as the proposal.
nicest = \ """foo bar" baz"""
this is ugly.
I agree, and don't usually do that -- it depends a lot on the level of indentation I'm working in -- I would only do that at the top level.
what's wrong with textwrap.dedent?
nothing -- but I left that out because it's a function call -- nothing to do with Python syntax, etc. Though now that you mention is, I really dont like the \z idea -- I just don't see the point. But a simiple way to call (and pre-process detent would be nice: nicest = d"""foo bar baz""" I believe that's been proposed on this lists before -- not sure if it petered out, or was rejected.
however, I bring up again the original use-case which has nothing to do with textwrap.dedent, or nested indentation. But consider this artificial example:
foo = textwrap.dedent(""" This is the help page for foo, a command \z with the following subcommands: bar - A very useful subcommand of foo \z and probably the subcommand you'll \z be using the most. baz - A simple maintenance command \z that you may need to use sometimes. """)
Currently you'd have to write it as:
foo = ( "This is the help page for foo, a command " "with the following subcommands:\n" " bar - A very useful subcommand of foo " "and probably the subcommand you'll " "be using the most.\n" " baz - A simple maintenance command " "that you may need to use sometimes." )
or if you want it to look "nicer", and don't mind linters shouting at you:
foo = ( "This is the help page for foo, a command " "with the following subcommands:\n" " bar - A very useful subcommand of foo " "and probably the subcommand you'll " "be using the most.\n" " baz - A simple maintenance command " "that you may need to use sometimes." )
And I think this sucks.
less than ideal, yes -- but please post the \z version -- is it any better? BTW, if I didn't mind linters yelling at me (and I don't), I'd do that as: foo = ( "This is the help page for foo, a command with the following subcommands:\n" " bar - A very useful subcommand of foo and probably the subcommand you'll be using the most.\n" " baz - A simple maintenance command that you may need to use sometimes." ) Which does not suck as much. And why that has nothing to do with textwrap.detent() I don't know -- that's pretty much EXACTLY what textwrap.detent() is for. I'd also add that large blocks of text really don't belong inline as big literals -- if I had a use for that (and I do, for, e.g. help for command line programs) I"d put it somewhere else: either an external text file, or as literals at the tiop level of a module, where ordinary tripple quoted strings are easy: FOO_HELP = """ This is the help page for foo, a command with the following subcommands: bar - A very useful subcommand of foo and probably the subcommand you'll be using the most. baz - A simple maintenance command that you may need to use sometimes. """ which is totally readable to me. -CHB -- Christopher Barker, PhD Python Language Consulting - Teaching - Scientific Software Development - Desktop GUI and Web Development - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython