How do you break a line in a string in python?

This article describes how to handle strings including line breaks (line feeds, new lines) in Python.

• Create a string containing line breaks
  • Newline code \n（LF）, \r\n（CR + LF）
  • Triple quote ''' or """
  • With indent
• Concatenate a list of strings on new lines
• Split a string into a list by line breaks: splitlines()
• Remove or replace line breaks
• Output with print() without a trailing newline

Create a string containing line breaks

Newline code \n（LF）, \r\n（CR + LF）

Inserting a newline code \n, \r\n into a string will result in a line break at that location.

s = 'Line1\nLine2\nLine3'
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

s = 'Line1\r\nLine2\r\nLine3'
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

On Unix, including Mac, \n (LF) is often used, and on Windows, \r\n (CR + LF) is often used as a newline code. Some text editors allow you to select a newline code.

Triple quote ''', """

You can write a string including line breaks with triple quotes ''' or """.

• Create a string in Python (single, double, triple quotes, str())

s = '''Line1
Line2
Line3'''
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

With indent

If you use triple quotes and indent, as shown below, unnecessary spaces are inserted.

s = '''
    Line1
    Line2
    Line3
    '''
print(s)
# 
#     Line1
#     Line2
#     Line3
#     

By enclosing each line in '' or "", adding a line break \n at the end, and using a backslash \, you can write as follows:

s = 'Line1\n'\
    'Line2\n'\
    'Line3'
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

It uses a mechanism in which consecutive string literals are concatenated. See the following article for details.

• Concatenate strings in Python (+ operator, join, etc.)

If you want to add indentation in the string, add a space to the string on each line.

s = 'Line1\n'\
    '    Line2\n'\
    '        Line3'
print(s)
# Line1
#     Line2
#         Line3

Since you can freely break lines in parentheses (), you can also write as follows using parentheses () without using backslashes \.

s = ('Line1\n'
     'Line2\n'
     'Line3')
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

s = ('Line1\n'
     '    Line2\n'
     '        Line3')
print(s)
# Line1
#     Line2
#         Line3

If you just want to align the beginning of a line, you can add a backslash \ to the first line of triple quotes.

s = '''\
Line1
Line2
Line3'''
print(s)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

s = '''\
Line1
    Line2
        Line3'''
print(s)
# Line1
#     Line2
#         Line3

Concatenate a list of strings on new lines

You can concatenate a list of strings into a single string with the string method, join().

• Concatenate strings in Python (+ operator, join, etc.)

By calling join() from a newline code \n or \r\n, each element is concatenated on new lines.

l = ['Line1', 'Line2', 'Line3']

s_n = '\n'.join(l)
print(s_n)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

print(repr(s_n))
# 'Line1\nLine2\nLine3'

s_rn = '\r\n'.join(l)
print(s_rn)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

print(repr(s_rn))
# 'Line1\r\nLine2\r\nLine3'

As in the example above, you can check the string with newline codes intact with the built-in function repr().

• Built-in Functions - repr() — Python 3.9.1rc1 documentation

Split a string into a list by line breaks: splitlines()

You can split a string by line breaks into a list with the string method, splitlines().

s = 'Line1\nLine2\r\nLine3'
print(s.splitlines())
# ['Line1', 'Line2', 'Line3']

In addition to \n and \r\n, it is also splitted by \v (line tabulation) or \f (form feed), etc.

• Built-in Types - str.splitlines() — Python 3.9.1rc1 documentation

See also the following article for more information on splitlines().

• Split strings in Python (delimiter, line break, regex, etc.)

Remove or replace line breaks

With splitlines() and join(), you can remove newline codes from a string or replace them with another string.

s = 'Line1\nLine2\r\nLine3'

print(''.join(s.splitlines()))
# Line1Line2Line3

print(' '.join(s.splitlines()))
# Line1 Line2 Line3

print(','.join(s.splitlines()))
# Line1,Line2,Line3

It is also possible to change the newline code at once. Even if the newline code is mixed or unknown, you can split it with splitlines() and then concatenate them with the desired code.

s_n = '\n'.join(s.splitlines())
print(s_n)
# Line1
# Line2
# Line3

print(repr(s_n))
# 'Line1\nLine2\nLine3'

Since splitlines() splits both \n (LF) and \r\n (CR + LF) as mentioned above, you don't have to worry about which newline code is used in the string.

You can also replace the newline code replace().

• Replace strings in Python (replace, translate, re.sub, re.subn)

s = 'Line1\nLine2\nLine3'

print(s.replace('\n', ''))
# Line1Line2Line3

print(s.replace('\n', ','))
# Line1,Line2,Line3

However, note that it will not work if it contains a different newline code than expected.

s = 'Line1\nLine2\r\nLine3'

s_error = s.replace('\n', ',')
print(s_error)
# ,Line3Line2

print(repr(s_error))
# 'Line1,Line2\r,Line3'

s_error = s.replace('\r\n', ',')
print(s_error)
# Line1
# Line2,Line3

print(repr(s_error))
# 'Line1\nLine2,Line3'

You can repeat replace() to replace multiple newline codes, but because \r\n contains \n, it doesn't work well if you do it in the wrong order. As mentioned above, using splitlines() and join() is safe because you don't have to worry about line feed codes.

s = 'Line1\nLine2\r\nLine3'

print(s.replace('\r\n', ',').replace('\n', ','))
# Line1,Line2,Line3

s_error = s.replace('\n', ',').replace('\r\n', ',')
print(s_error)
# ,Line3Line2

print(repr(s_error))
# 'Line1,Line2\r,Line3'

print(','.join(s.splitlines()))
# Line1,Line2,Line3

You can use rstrip() to remove the trailing newline code.

• Built-in Types - str.rstrip() — Python 3.9.1rc1 documentation

s = 'aaa\n'
print(s + 'bbb')
# aaa
# bbb

print(s.rstrip() + 'bbb')
# aaabbb

Output with print() without a trailing newline

By default, print() adds a newline at the end. Therefore, if you execute print() continuously, each output result will be displayed with a line break.

print('a')
print('b')
print('c')
# a
# b
# c

This is because the default value of the argument end of print(), which specifies the character string to be added at the end, is '\n'.

If the empty string '' is specified in end, a line break will not occur at the end.

print('a', end='')
print('b', end='')
print('c', end='')
# abc

Any string can be specified in end.

print('a', end='-')
print('b', end='-')
print('c')
# a-b-c

However, if you want to concatenate the character strings and output, it is easier to concatenate the original character strings. See the following article.

• Concatenate strings in Python (+ operator, join, etc.)

How do you break a single line in Python?

How do you break a line inside a string?

What does \r do in Python?

How do you cut a part of a string in Python?