Why does python use unconventional triple-quotation marks for comments?

Question

Why didn\'t python just use the traditional style of comments like C/C++/Java uses:

/**
 * Comment lines 
 * More comment lines
 */

// line comments
// line         


        

Answer 1

Triple-quotes aren't comments. They're string literals that span multiple lines and include those line breaks in the resulting string. This allows you to use

somestr = """This is a rather long string containing
several lines of text just as you would do in C.
    Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is\
 significant."""

instead of

somestr = "This is a rather long string containing\n\
several lines of text just as you would do in C.\n\
    Note that whitespace at the beginning of the line is\
 significant."