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, 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 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 could also put multiple statements in a single line using semicolons, as follows

a = 1; b = 2; c = 3