Writing normal texts in python file

Question

It's just a curiosity about python. Is there a way to write anything in python files without getting any error and without using comments? It could be a macro / pre processor word / python option to ignore the lines.
For instance:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

I am writing anything I want here!


def func1(number):
   print(number)

func1(3)

and the result wouldn't trigger any error, printing the number 3.

A similar C++ question: Force the compiler to ignore some lines in the program

Answer 1

You could use comments and possibly add a special character outside of the comments if your goal is to apply a custom pre-processor. This would be similar to what the #! commands at the top of your file.

For example, in the following, I just used M: as the special prefix:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

# M: I am writing anything I want here!


def func1(number):
   print(number)

func1(3)

Answer 2

Without comments:

Without comments, you could surround with quotes and assign to a variable:

tmp = "I am writing anything I want here!"

As such:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

tmp = "I am writing anything I want here!"


def func1(number):
   print(number)

func1(3)

---

With comments

You can comment it out as such:

1. Multi-line comments/strings

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

"""I am writing anything I want here!
Yep, literally anything!

def func1(number):
   print(number)

func1(3)

2. Single-line comments

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

#I am writing anything I want here!


def func1(number):
   print(number)

func1(3)

Answer 3

The easiest way to do this, although it's technically not Pythonic and should not be left in the final draft as it creates an unused string, is with triple quotes on each side. It's the simplest way to toggle medium-large portions of code. Something like:

x = 5

""" DEBUG:
x += 5
x *= 5 * 5
x = x % 3
x -= 2
"""

print x

If it's one or two lines, you can always use normal comments,

#like this

For your code, you'd want:

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8
"""
I am writing anything I want here!
"""

def func1(number):
  print(number)

func1(3)

Answer 4

I just found something that I was looking for.

The aswer to my question is available here:

Conditional compilation in Python

https://code.google.com/p/pypreprocessor/