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

[Jim Jewett]

On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at 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