An Elegant Solution to Python's Multiline String? - python-3.x

Question

I was trying to log a completion of a scheduled event I set to run on Django. I was trying my very best to make my code look presentable, So instead of putting the string into a single line, I have used a multiline string to output to the logger within a Command Management class method. The example as code shown:
# the usual imports...
# ....
import textwrap
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
class Command(BaseCommand):
def handle(self, *args, **kwargs):
# some codes here
# ....
final_statement = f'''\
this is the final statements \
with multiline string to have \
a neater code.'''
dedented_text = textwrap.dedent(final_statment)
logger.info(dedent.replace(' ',''))
I have tried a few methods I found, however, most quick and easy methods still left a big chunk of spaces on the terminal. As shown here:
this is the final statement with multiline string to have a neater code.
So I have come up with a creative solution to solve my problem. By using.
dedent.replace(' ','')
Making sure to replace two spaces with no space in order not to get rid of the normal spaces between words. Which finally produced:
this is the final statement with multiline string to have a neater code.
Is this an elegant solution or did I missed something on the internet?

Answer 1

You could use regex to simply remove all white space after a newline. Additionally, wrapping it into a function leads to less repetitive code, so let's do that.
import re
def single_line(string):
return re.sub("\n\s+", "", string)
final_statement = single_line(f'''
this is the final statements
with multiline string to have
a neater code.''')
print(final_statement)
Alternatively, if you wish to avoid this particular problem (and don't mine the developmental overhead), you could store them inside a file, like JSON so you can quickly edit prompts while keeping your code clean.

Answer 2

Thanks to Neil's suggestion, I have come out with a more elegant solution. By creating a function to replace the two spaces with none.
def single_line(string):
return string.replace(' ','')
final_statement = '''\
this is a much neater
final statement
to present my code
'''
print(single_line(final_statement)
As improvised from Neil's solution, I have cut down the regex import. That's one line less of code!
Also, making it a function improves on readability as the whole print statement just read like English. "Print single line final statement"
Any better idea?

Answer 3

The issue with both Neil’s and Wong Siwei’s answers is they don’t work if your multiline string contains lines more indented than others:
my_string = """\
this is my
string and
it has various
identation
levels"""
What you want in the case above is to remove the two-spaces indentation, not every space at the beginning of a line.
The solution below should work in all cases:
import re
def dedent(s):
indent_level = None
for m in re.finditer(r"^ +", s):
line_indent_level = len(m.group())
if indent_level is None or indent_level > line_indent_level:
indent_level = line_indent_level
if not indent_level:
return s
return re.sub(r"(?:^|\n) {%s}" % indent_level, "", s)
It first scans the whole string to find the lowest indentation level then uses that information to dedent all lines of it.
If you only care about making your code easier to read, you may instead use C-like strings "concatenation":
my_string = (
"this is my string"
" and I write it on"
" multiple lines"
)
print(repr(my_string))
# => "this is my string and I write it on multiple lines"
You may also want to make it explicit with +s:
my_string = "this is my string" + \
" and I write it on" + \
" multiple lines"