Why isn't this ASCII art printing on multiple lines despite being a multiline string?

Question

I have created a constant which contains some ASCII art of a triangle, like this:

ascii_triangle ='''       /\
     /  \
    /    \
   /      \
  /        \
 /__________\ '''

I then use this as the argument for a function, so I can use the picture within a function (along with some other ASCII art and other arguments). The function isn't important, but the problem is that when I try to print it using

print(ascii_triangle)

within the function, the output looks like this:

       /         /          /           /            /             /__________\

How can I make it look like a proper triangle?

You need to a) use raw strings (`r'''`) or b) escape the \ with another \ -> \\ — Antti Haapala -- Слава Україні, Jul 16 '17 at 11:17

cs95 · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-16T11:42:25.777

The ascii-art you posted has a trailing backslash just before each newline. This backslash if not followed by anything besides a newline is treated as the line continuation character.

Observe:

In [118]: x = 'foo \
     ...: bar \
     ...: baz'

In [119]: x
Out[119]: 'foo bar baz'

In the example above, there is nothing after the trailing backslash, so python believes it is a single string without any newlines. The same treatment is given even if you have a multiline quote for a string.

You'll need to add a space after the backslash, and make your string a raw literal.

In [123]: ascii_triangle =r'''      /\ 
     ...:      /  \ 
     ...:     /    \ 
     ...:    /      \ 
     ...:   /        \ 
     ...:  /__________\ '''

In [124]: print(ascii_triangle)
      /\ 
     /  \ 
    /    \ 
   /      \ 
  /        \ 
 /__________\

Try adding a space after the backslash in the first example, and you'd get

SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

Indicating python will require a multiline quote for the string.

Why isn't this ASCII art printing on multiple lines despite being a multiline string?

1 Answers1