PEP8 compliance and exception messages ?

[Chris Rebert]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 7:40 PM, shearichard <shearichard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi - PEP8 says lines should not exceed 79 characters in length
> ( http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ ).
>
> So if you've got some code that looks like this :
>
> raise fooMod.fooException("Some message which is quite long")
>
> ... and assuming a certain amount of indenting you're going to break
> that guideline.
>
> However there's a way around that ! You can do this ...
>
> raise fooMod.fooException("\
>        Some message \
>        which is quite long")
>
> ... but the trouble is when that Exception is raised the message is
> displayed as :
>
> "Some message                     which is quite long"
>
>
> I'm aware that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of something or
> the other so maybe I should just let the PEP8 verifier complain but
> otherwise does anyone have any ideas for how to get around this ?

Use implicit string literal concatenation:

raise fooMod.fooException(
    "Some message "
    "which is quite long")
#) # you could also put the closing paren here instead

Alternatively, you could disregard PEP 8 on this point on the grounds
that the 79/80 characters per line limit is outdated.

Cheers,
Chris
--
http://blog.rebertia.com