SyntaxError: unexpected character after line continuation character

Question

I am testing a code with doctest and I want to comment in front of the tests like this:

Tests:
>>> part([(\'Eva\', \'Sao Paulo\', 21098, \'04-12\', 1182         


        

Answer 1

You can't put anything after the line continuation character \. You have comments after the backslash:

... \     #False, 1, 0

Remove the comment, the newline has to directly follow the \:

part([('Eva', 'Sao Paulo', 21098, '04-12', 1182),\
    ('Ana', 'Toquio', 21098, '06-12', 1182),\
    ('Ana', 'Sao Paulo', 21098, '04-12', 1096)])\
    [2, 1]

Note the extra \ after the part(..) call to ensure the [2, 1] slice is part of it! See the Explicit line joining section of the reference documentation:

A line ending in a backslash cannot carry a comment. [...] A backslash is illegal elsewhere on a line outside a string literal.

However, you don't need to use a line continuation character at all within parentheses, the logical line is automatically extended until all parentheses and brackets are closed:

part([('Eva', 'Sao Paulo', 21098, '04-12', 1182),    # False, 1, 0
      ('Ana', 'Toquio', 21098, '06-12', 1182),
      ('Ana', 'Sao Paulo', 21098, '04-12', 1096)])[2, 1]

You can include comments when relying on the parentheses to extend the logical line.

From the Implicit line joining section:

Expressions in parentheses, square brackets or curly braces can be split over more than one physical line without using backslashes. [...] Implicitly continued lines can carry comments.