[Tutor] secondary prompt

Michael P. Reilly arcege@shore.net
Fri, 7 Apr 2000 22:43:39 -0400 (EDT)


> when entering code in interactive mode, how do you tell the interpreter =
> that the next line is a continuation (and have it display the secondary =
> prompt), rather than a new line?

There are three basic times when you will get a secondary prompt.

1.  when you explicitly add a line continuation with a backslash (\):
  >>> print  "The Knights who " + \
  ... "say Ni!"
(reference: Python Language Reference, 2.1.4 Explicit line joining)

2.  when various forms of parentheses are incomplete:
  >>> print ("The Knights who " +
  ... "say Hi!")
  >>> a = {
  ... 'spam': 'eggs'
  ... }
(reference: Python Language Reference, 2.1.5 Implicit line joining)

3.  when Python's syntax demands it, with multi-line statements:
  >>> if 1:
  ...  pass
this will be most lines that end with ":"
(reference: Python Language Reference, 7. Compound statements)

Enjoy,
  -Arcege

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| Michael P. Reilly, Release Engineer | Email: arcege@shore.net        |
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