Assignment with line continuation - Python

Question

What is the preferred style for assigning values to variables when the variables are nested several levels deep, have fairly long names, and are being assigned fairly long values/expressions.

For example:

if this:
    if that:
        if here:
            if there:
                 big_variable['big_key']['big_value'] = another_big_variable_that_pushes_line_over_79_characters
                 other_thing = something

The character-limit breaches are only in the single digits, but I want to clean up my code so that it follows PEP 8 as faithfully as possible. I've done the following, but I am still fairly new to python, and I'm not sure if it's the sort of thing that would make an experienced python programmer cringe:

if this:
    if that:
        if here:
            if there:
                big_variable['big_key']['big_value'] = \
                    another_big_variable_that_pushes_line_over_79_characters
                other_thing = something

I get the impression that the line continuation character is somewhat taboo; but I can't really think of a cleaner solution than the one I have if I'm working with these big dictionaries and I can't make a clean break in the middle of the variable name.

Answer 1

I don't think there is any problem with line continuation in Python. But sometimes I prefer this:

big_variable['big_key']['big_value'] =(
    another_big_variable_that_pushes_line_over_79_characters
)

It is useful in long expressions, too.