[Tutor] Closing triple quotation marks.

[Steven D'Aprano]

Lisi wrote:
[...]
> Fair enough. the closing quotation marks are not there.
> 
> But when they _are_ there, i.e. when that stanza reads:
> 
> target.write """
> line1\nline2\nline3\n
> """

This is not the problem, but I just thought I'd mention that it's a bit 
silly to go to the trouble of using newline escape characters inside a 
triple-quoted string! You can do it if you want, but this would be more 
naturally written as:

"""
line 1
line 2
line 3
"""

Now, on to your actual error:


> I get:
> 
> lisi at Tux:~/Python/LearnPythonTheHardWay$ python extra-credit_16a.py 
> learning.txt
>   File "extra-credit_16a.py", line 38
>     """
>       ^
> SyntaxError: invalid syntax

This has nothing to do with the triple quote marks. Simplify the code by 
shrinking the text inside the quotes to a single line, and you get:

target.write "..."


and you will get the same SyntaxError. Can you see the problem? No 
brackets! You need to include parentheses to call the write method:

target.write("...")


Then you can expand the string to use a triple-quote:

target.write("""
line 1
line 2
line 3
""")

and all should be good.



-- 
Steven