How to split long regular expression rules to multiple lines in Python

Question

Is this actually doable? I have some very long regex pattern rules that are hard to understand because they don\'t fit into the screen at once. Example:

test         


        

Answer 1

You can split your regex pattern by quoting each segment. No backslashes needed.

test = re.compile(('(?P.+):\d+:\s+warning:\s+Member'
                   '\s+(?P.+)\s+\((?P%s)\) '
                   'of (class|group|namespace)\s+(?P.+)'
                   '\s+is not documented') % (self.__MEMBER_TYPES), re.IGNORECASE)

You can also use the raw string flag 'r' and you'll have to put it before each segment.

See the docs.