[Python-ideas] with statement syntax forces ugly line breaks?

[Georg Brandl]

Am 09.09.2010 07:49, schrieb Mark Summerfield:
> Hi Nathan,
> 
> On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 13:00:25 -0400
> Nathan Schneider <nathan at cmu.edu> wrote:
>> Mark,
>> 
>> I have approached these cases by using the backslash
>> line-continuation operator:
>> 
>> with FakeContext("a") as a, \
>>    FakeContext("b") as b:
>>    pass
> 
> Yes, of course, and that's the way I've done it. But it seems a pity to
> do it this way when the documentation explicitly discourages the use of
> the backslash for line continuation:
> http://docs.python.org/py3k/howto/doanddont.html
> (look at the very last item)

Which is actually factually incorrect and should be rewritten.  The only
situation where stray whitespace after a backslash is valid syntax is
within a string literal (and there, there is no alternative).

So at least the "stray whitespace leads to silently buggy code" reason
not to use backslashes is wrong.

Georg

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