1.8. Strings Part II¶
1.8.1. Triple Quoted String Literals¶
Strings delimited by one quote character, like '
,
are required to lie within
a single Python line. It is sometimes convenient to have a
multi-line string, which can be delimited with triple quotes,
'''
. Try
typing the following. You will get continuation lines until the
closing triple quotes. Try in the Shell:
sillyTest = '''Say,
"I'm in!"
This is line 3'''
print(sillyTest)
The line structure is preserved in a multi-line string. As you can see, this also allows you to embed both single and double quote characters!
1.8.2. Escape Codes¶
Continuing in the Shell with sillyTest
, enter just
sillyTest
The answer looks strange! It indicates an alternate way to encode
the string internally in Python using escape codes. Escape codes
are embedded inside string literals and start with a backslash
character \
. They are used to embed characters
that are either unprintable or have a special syntactic meaning to
Python that you want to suppress. In this example you see some of the
ones in this short list of most
common escape codes:
Escape code | Meaning |
---|---|
\\ |
\ (backslash) |
\n |
newline |
\' |
' (single quote character) |
\" |
" (double quote character) |
The newline character indicates further text will appear on a new
line when printed. When you use the print
function, you get the
actual printed meaning of the escape coded character.
Predict the result, and try in the Shell:
print('a\nb\n\nc')
Did you guess the right number of lines splitting in the right places?