How to indent the contents of a multi-line string?

Question

I'm using the python cog module to generate C++ boilerplate code, and it is working great so far, but my only concern is that the resulting code, which is ugly by itself, is made worse by the fact that it's not indented. I'm too lazy to get the indentation right in the string generation function, so I'm wondering if there is a Python util function to indent the content of a multi-line string?

Answer 1

You can indent the lines in a string by just padding each one with proper number of pad characters. This can easily be done by using the textwrap.indent() function which was added to the module in Python 3.3. Alternatively you could use the code below which will also work in earlier Python versions.

try:     import textwrap     textwrap.indent except AttributeError:  # undefined function (wasn't added until Python 3.3)     def indent(text, amount, ch=' '):         padding = amount * ch         return ''.join(padding+line for line in text.splitlines(True)) else:     def indent(text, amount, ch=' '):         return textwrap.indent(text, amount * ch)  text = '''\ And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.  3:15-King James '''  print('Text indented 4 spaces:\n') print(indent(text, 4)) 

Result:

Text indented 4 spaces:      And the Lord God said unto the serpent,     Because thou hast done this, thou art     cursed above all cattle, and above every     beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt     thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the     days of thy life: And I will put enmity     between thee and the woman, and between     thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise     thy head, and thou shalt bruise his     heel.      3:15-King James 

Answer 2

If you have a leading newline:

Heredocs can contain a literal newline, or you can prepend one.

indent = '    '  indent_me = ''' Hello World '''  indented = indent_me.replace('\n', '\n' + indent) print(indented) 

Here is it shown in pprint dump:

>>> pprint(indented)

' Hello\n World\n '

Awkward, but works

---

If you do not have a leading newline:

indent = '    '  indent_me = '''\ Hello World '''  indented = indent + indent_me.replace('\n', '\n' + indent) print(indented) 

Optional, trim first newline and trailing spaces/tabs

.lstrip('\n').rstrip(' \t')