write multiple lines in a file in python

Question

I have the following code:

line1 = raw_input("line 1: ")
line2 = raw_input("line 2: ")
line3 = raw_input("line 3: ")
print "I'm going to write these to the file."
target.write(line1)
target.write("\n")
target.write(line2)
target.write("\n")
target.write(line3)
target.write("\n")

Here target is the file object and line1, line2, line3 are the user inputs. I want to use only a single target.write() command to write this script. I have tried using the following:

target.write("%s \n %s \n %s \n") % (line1, line2, line3)

But doesn't that put a string inside another string but if I use the following:

target.write(%s "\n" %s "\n" %s "\n") % (line1, line2, line3)

The Python interpreter(I'm using Microsoft Powershell) says invalid syntax. How would I able to do it?

Answer 1

You're confusing the braces. Do it like this:

target.write("%s \n %s \n %s \n" % (line1, line2, line3))

Or even better, use writelines:

target.writelines([line1, line2, line3])

Answer 2

another way which, at least to me, seems more intuitive:

target.write('''line 1
line 2
line 3''')