Clean long string from spaces and tab in python

Question

supposing to have a long string to create and this string is within a method of a class, what is the best way to write the code?

def printString():

    mystring = '''title\n
    {{\\usepackage}}\n
    text continues {param}
    '''.format(param='myParameter')

    return mystring

this method is well formatted but the final string has unwanted spaces:

a = printString()
print(a)
title

    {\usepackage}

    text continues myParameter

while this method gives the corrected results but the code can become messy if the string(s) is long:

def printString():

    mystring = '''title\n
{{\\usepackage}}\n
text continues {param}
    '''.format(param='myParameter')

    return mystring

a = printString()
print(a)

title

{\usepackage}

text continues myParameter

some hints to have a good code quality and the results?

Mike Chen · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-07 22:04:00Z

1

Try enclosing the string you want with brackets, like so:

def printString():

    mystring = ('title\n'
                '{{\\usepackage}}\n'
                'text continues {param}').format(param='myParameter')

    return mystring

This would allow you to break the string to several lines while c=having control over the whitespace.

answered Dec 7, 2018 at 22:04

Mike Chen

897 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Paritosh Singh · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-07 21:59:57Z

1

You can use brackets to maintain tidiness of long strings inside functions.

def printString():
    mystring = ("title\n"
    "{{\\usepackage}}\n"
    "text continues {param}"
    ).format(param='myParameter')

    return (mystring)

print(printString())

Results in:

title
{\usepackage}
text continues myParameter

You may also wish to explicitly use the + symbol to represent string concatenation, but that changes this from a compile time operation to a runtime operation. Source

def printString():
    mystring = ("title\n" +
    "{{\\usepackage}}\n" +
    "text continues {param}"
    ).format(param='myParameter')

    return (mystring)

answered Dec 7, 2018 at 21:59

Paritosh Singh

6,2562 gold badges17 silver badges35 bronze badges

Comments

Sunitha · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-10 10:58:35Z

1

You can use re.sub to cleanup any spaces and tabs at the beginning of each lines

>>> import re
>>> def printString():
...     mystring = '''title\n
...     {{\\usepackage}}\n
...     text continues {param}
...     '''.format(param='myParameter')
...
...     return re.sub(r'\n[ \t]+', '\n', mystring)
...

This gives the following o/p

>>> a = printString()
>>> print (a)
title

{\usepackage}

text continues myParameter

edited Dec 10, 2018 at 10:58

answered Dec 7, 2018 at 22:00

Sunitha

12.1k2 gold badges23 silver badges23 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Clean long string from spaces and tab in python

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related