Python: Essential Reference

2. Lexical Conventions and Syntax

This chapter describes the syntactic and lexical conventions of a Python program. Topics include line structure, grouping of statements, reserved words, literals, operators, tokens, and source code encoding.

Line Structure and Indentation

Each statement in a program is terminated with a newline. Long statements can span multiple lines by using the line-continuation character (\), as shown in the following example:

You don’t need the line-continuation character when the definition of a triple-quoted string, list, tuple, or dictionary spans multiple lines. More generally, any part of a program enclosed in parentheses ...