Pythonic way to create a long multi-line string?

Question

I have a very long query. I would like to split it in several lines in Python. A way to do it in JavaScript would be using several sentences and joining them with a `+` operator (I know, maybe it's not the most efficient way to do it, but I'm not really concerned about performance in this stage, just code readability). Example: var long_string = 'some text not important. just garbage to' + 'illustrate my example';I tried doing something similar in Python, but it didn't work, so I used `\\` to split the long string. However, I'm not sure if this is the only/best/pythonicest way of doing it. It looks awkward. Actual code: query = 'SELECT action.descr as "action", '\\  'role.id as role_id,'\\  'role.descr as role'\\  'FROM '\\  'public.role_action_def,'\\  'public.role,'\\  'public.record_def, '\\  'public.action'\\  'WHERE role.id = role_action_def.role_id AND'\\  'record_def.id = role_action_def.def_id AND'\\  'action.id = role_action_def.action_id AND'\\  'role_action_def.account_id = ' + account_id + ' AND'\\  'record_def.account_id=' + account_id + ' AND'\\  'def_id=' + def_id

Answer 1

One way I like to work with longer strings is to break it up in to a list because I find it easier to manipulate. You can then make it back in to a simple string using the join() function so that

list1 = ["hello", "world"]

string = ' '.join(list1)

print(string)

would print "hello world". This method also works to print any range inside the list