Re: [Python-ideas] Implicit string literal concatenation considered harmful?

On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:

... Normally you don't just create a string and do nothing with it.

I do. Or, rather, I assign it to a temp name, and then use that temp name in the next line -- temp variables seems less ugly than line continuations.

I think I have found the fatal problem with that suggestion: it rules out using concatenation in docstrings at all.

I think a better solution would be to loosen the requirements for docstrings. Reasonably harmless proposals include (1) Always use the first expression, if it isn't a statement. (2) str( < the above > ) (3) Special treatment for __doc__, such as __doc__ = ... -jJ