Python Statement

In this tutorial, you will learn about Python statements, why indentation is important and use of comments in programming.

Python Statement

Instructions that a Python interpreter can execute are called statements. For example, a = 1 is an assignment statement. if statement, for statement, while statement, etc. are other kinds of statements which will be discussed later.

Multi-line statement

In Python, the end of a statement is marked by a newline character. But we can make a statement extend over multiple lines with the line continuation character (\). For example:

a = 1 + 2 + 3 + \
    4 + 5 + 6 + \
    7 + 8 + 9

This is an explicit line continuation. In Python, line continuation is implied inside parentheses ( ), brackets [ ], and braces { }. For instance, we can implement the above multi-line statement as:

a = (1 + 2 + 3 +
    4 + 5 + 6 +
    7 + 8 + 9)

Here, the surrounding parentheses ( ) do the line continuation implicitly. Same is the case with [ ] and { }. For example:

colors = ['red',
          'blue',
          'green']

We can also put multiple statements in a single line using semicolons, as follows:

a = 1; b = 2; c = 3