Break python regular expression with escape into multiple lines

Question

I have a python beginner's question. How would one break this line into multiple lines?

SET_CMD = re.compile (r'boot +set-cmd +-s +command\=(?P<pw>.*?)$')

I don't want to do this because pep8 complains.

SET_CMD = re.compile\
    (r'boot +set-cmd +-s +command\=(?P<pw>.*?)$')

Thanks, Mat

Answer 1

Do something like this:

SET_CMD = re.compile (r'boot +set-cmd +-s'
                      r' +command\=(?P<pw>.*?)$')

There are two key facts here:

• being inside of parentheses provides implicit line continuation
• consecutive strings are automatically concatenated

Answer 2

Instead of breaking before the parantheses, you could use the regex verbosity flag to split the expression in multiple lines. Additionally you can include comments, which might come handy for complicated expressions.

For your example:

SET_CMD = re.compile(r'''boot\s        # Comment
                         +set-cmd\s    # ...
                         +-s\s
                         +command
                         \=(?P<pw>.*?)$')''', re.VERBOSE)

Note that I inserted some \\s to match whitespaces, since re.VERBOSE ignores the whitespaces and linebreaks in the expression.