If I wanted to print multiple lines of text in Python without typing print('') for every line, is there a way to do that?
I'm using this for ASCII art in Python 3.5.1.
7 Answers
You can use triple quotes (single ' or double "):
a = """
text
text
text
"""
print(a)
2 Comments
LayneSadler
this also works with f strings and raised errors
Kuba
This can be paired with
textwrap.dedent(a) to remove the indentation. Or even better - use print's argument sep=os.linesep as in Quba's answer.As far as I know, there are three different ways.
Use os.linesep in your print:
print(f"first line{os.linesep}Second line")
Use sep=os.linesep in print:
print("first line", "second line", sep=os.linesep)
Use triple quotes and a multiline string:
print("""
Line1
Line2
""")
3 Comments
mic
This (especially the first two methods) is very useful for packages so that indentation does not get messed up.
qwr
Why use os.linesep instead of "\n"? AFAIK that works on all platforms including Windows
Ture Pålsson
@qwr This answer is 9 years old, so we’re a bit late to the party, but the docs for the
os module in Python 3.13 explicitly state "Do not use os.linesep as a line terminator when writing files opened in text mode (the default); use a single '\n' instead, on all platforms." (and that phrase has been there since at least 2007!)I wanted to answer to the following question which is a little bit different than this:
Best way to print messages on multiple lines
He wanted to show lines from repeated characters too. He wanted this output:
----------------------------------------
# Operator Micro-benchmarks
# Run_mode: short
# Num_repeats: 5
# Num_runs: 1000
----------------------------------------
You can create those lines inside f-strings with a multiplication, like this:
run_mode, num_repeats, num_runs = 'short', 5, 1000
s = f"""
{'-'*40}
# Operator Micro-benchmarks
# Run_mode: {run_mode}
# Num_repeats: {num_repeats}
# Num_runs: {num_runs}
{'-'*40}
"""
print(s)
1 Comment
DagicCross
Any idea how to put an end to the back of these? I would like to do sometimes like this
while True: time.sleep(1) direction = ["left", "right", "up", "down"] x = random.choice(direction) print(x, end="\r") thanks!The triple quotes answer is great for ASCII art, but for those wondering - what if my multiple lines are a tuple, list, or other iterable that returns strings (perhaps a list comprehension?), then how about:
print("\n".join(<*iterable*>))
For example:
print("\n".join(["{}={}".format(k, v) for k, v in os.environ.items() if 'PATH' in k]))
1 Comment
Ran Lottem
This might require adding a call to str() on the elements of the iterable, since
print would normally do that, but join doesn't. print("\n".join([str(x) for x in iterable])Adding \n in the string adds a new line.
For example,
print("Adds one extra line after the text\n")
print("Adds two extra lines after the text\n\n")
print("Adds three extra lines after the text\n\n\n")
print("And so on...")
Comments
Somehow indent preserving way is not yet mentioned:
print('This is a long string that is split \n'
'across multiple lines using parentheses')
This is a long string that is split
across multiple lines using parentheses
this works because consequent string literals are implicitly joined:
msg = 'Space after newline symbol \n' 'improves readability'
print(msg)
Space after newline symbol
improves readability
1 Comment
jsbueno
Indeed, this option was missing - but I believe you could explain it better (what the language does when finding consecutive strings, why are the parentheses needed, etc...) - it will deserve some extra upvotes if so.
For ASCII art you do not want escape char be and tried resolved, so putting "r" before the triple quotes tells Python it is a "raw" format multi-line string, like:
print(r""" your art here """)
forloop..."\n"can be used for a new line character, or if you are printing the same thing multiple times then a for loop should be used.