As you all know, Python supports a compound "with" statement to avoid the necessity of nesting these statements. Unfortunately, I find that using this feature often leads to exceeding the 79-character recommendation set forward by PEP 8. # The following is over 79 characters with open("/long/path/to/file1") as file1, open("/long/path/to/file2") as file2: pass This can be avoided by using the line continuation character, like so: with open("/long/path/to/file1") as file1, \ open("/long/path/to/file2") as file2: pass But PEP-8 prefers using implicit continuation with parentheses over line continuation. PEP 328 states that using the line continuation character is "unpalatable", which was the justification for allowing multi-line imports using parentheses: from package.subpackage import (UsefulClass1, UsefulClass2, ModuleVariable1, ModuleVariable2) Is there a reason we cannot do the same thing with compound with statements? Has this been suggested before? If so, why was it rejected? with (open("/long/path/to/file1") as file1, open("/long/path/to/file2") as file2): pass I would be happy to write the PEP for this and get plugged in to the Python development process if this is an idea worth pursuing. ML