How to add multiline comments in Python

Published: 31 December 2020
on channel: Jamie Chan

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How to add multiline comments in Python

Unlike most programming languages, Python does not come with an out-of-the-box solution to adding multiline comments. There are two workarounds to it.

The first is to convert the block of text or code that you want to comment out into multiple SINGLE-line comments. To do that, we add # in front of each line of text.

Most editors provide shortcuts for converting regions of text into multiple single-line comments. For instance, in IDLE, you can select the block of text or code that you want to comment out and press Alt-3 (or Option-3 for Mac OS). Alternatively, you can select the text and select "Format", followed by "Comment Out Region" in the menu bar.

In addition to converting the block of text to multiple single-line comments, we can convert it to a triple quoted string.

Most triple-quoted strings are ignored by the interpreter and thus work as a comment.

For instance,

'''
This is a comment
that spans
three lines
'''

However, triple-quoted strings that appear as the first statement in a function, module, class, or method are NOT ignored by the interpreter. Instead, they are treated as documentation strings that form part of the code's documentation. These documentation strings can be accessed and displayed using the _doc_ attribute or the built-in help() function. These documentation strings are not comments as they are not ignored by the interpreter.

Useful reference:
https://learncodingfast.com/how-to-ad...

IDLE download:
https://www.python.org/downloads/

Installing Python:
http://learncodingfast.com/how-to-ins...

About Docstrings (aka documentation strings):
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-...

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