What does <\ mean in Python?

Question

I've been looking a this code that uses numpy to reduce the size of a dataframe.

Here's a snippet

                if c_min > np.iinfo(np.int8).min and c_max <\
                  np.iinfo(np.int8).max:
                    df[col] = df[col].astype(np.int8)

Is the \ there after the < due to the newline? Like telling python that the if statement is going to continue on the next line? Just wanted to make sure.

Answer 1

The '\' (backslash) character is the line continuation character which just tells python that the statement will continue on the next line. So

if c_min > np.iinfo(np.int8).min and c_max <\
  np.iinfo(np.int8).max:
    df[col] = df[col].astype(np.int8)

could just be re-written as:

if c_min > np.iinfo(np.int8).min and c_max < np.iinfo(np.int8).max:
    df[col] = df[col].astype(np.int8)

There is no difference between them logically, it is just personal preference.

Docs: https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#explicit-line-joining