Spread a statement over various lines

Wed Sep 18 02:30:08 EDT 2019

Manfred Lotz wrote:
> I have a function like follows
>> def regex_from_filepat(fpat):
> rfpat = fpat.replace('.', '\\.') \
> .replace('%', '.') \
> .replace('*', '.*')
>> return '^' + rfpat + '$'
>>> As I don't want to have the replace() functions in one line my
> question is if it is ok to spread the statement over various lines as
> shown above, or if there is a better way?

Sometimes you can avoid method-chaining:
>>> REP = str.maketrans({".": "\\.", "%": ".", "*": ".*"})
>>> def regex_from_filepat(fpat):
... return fpat.translate(REP)
... 
>>> regex_from_filepat("*foo.%")
'.*foo\\..'
Generally speaking a long statement may be a hint that there is an 
alternative spelling.