Pythonic way to create a long multi-line string
If you don't want a multiline string, but just have a long single line string, you can use parentheses. Just make sure you don't include commas between the string segments (then it will be a tuple).
query = ('SELECT action.descr as "action", '
'role.id as role_id,'
'role.descr as role'
' FROM '
'public.role_action_def,'
'public.role,'
'public.record_def, '
'public.action'
' WHERE role.id = role_action_def.role_id AND'
' record_def.id = role_action_def.def_id AND'
' action.id = role_action_def.action_id AND'
' role_action_def.account_id = '+account_id+' AND'
' record_def.account_id='+account_id+' AND'
' def_id='+def_id)
In a SQL statement like what you're constructing, multiline strings would also be fine. But if the extra white space a multiline string would contain would be a problem, then this would be a good way to achieve what you want.
As noted in the comments, concatenating SQL queries in this way is a SQL injection security risk waiting to happen, so use your database's parameterized queries feature to prevent this. However, I'm leaving the answer as-is otherwise as it directly answers the question asked.
I found myself happy with this one:
string = """This is a
very long string,
containing commas,
that I split up
for readability""".replace('\n',' ')
Breaking lines by \
works for me. Here is an example:
longStr = "This is a very long string " \
"that I wrote to help somebody " \
"who had a question about " \
"writing long strings in Python"
Are you talking about multi-line strings? Easy, use triple quotes to start and end them.
s = """ this is a very
long string if I had the
energy to type more and more ..."""
You can use single quotes too (3 of them of course at start and end) and treat the resulting string s
just like any other string.
NOTE: Just as with any string, anything between the starting and ending quotes becomes part of the string, so this example has a leading blank (as pointed out by @root45). This string will also contain both blanks and newlines.
I.e.,:
' this is a very\n long string if I had the\n energy to type more and more ...'
Finally, one can also construct long lines in Python like this:
s = ("this is a very"
"long string too"
"for sure ..."
)
which will not include any extra blanks or newlines (this is a deliberate example showing what the effect of skipping blanks will result in):
'this is a verylong string toofor sure ...'
No commas required, simply place the strings to be joined together into a pair of parenthesis and be sure to account for any needed blanks and newlines.