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Jaspreet Jolly
Jaspreet Jolly

Reputation: 1313

why python allows triple quotes both as multi-line comment as well as string literal

I am new to python and question may sound silly but I wanted to clear it. While learning I came across code where python is allowing triple quotes(""") both as multi-line comment and also as string literal. So how does python knows if it is intended as comment or a string literal.

"""This
is treated
as comment
and ignored"""

a = """It is
treated as
string literal"""
print(a)

Output:-

It is
treated as
string literal

Upvotes: 3

Views: 388

Answers (1)

qBen_Plays
qBen_Plays

Reputation: 258

Essentially, if the triple quotation marks aren’t assigned to a variable or a doc string, python will ignore it. For example 

""""This is a module-level docstring""""


def randomFunction():
   """This will be treated as a docstring,
   so if you were to run help(randomFunction) it 
   will display whatever is in here"""


   a = """This is actually assigned to a variable,
   and thus python will interpret it as such"""

   """This by itself is just an unassigned string variable """

The same happens with strings, which are inside two quotes.

Upvotes: 2

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