Is there something wrong with this line of Python code?

Question

I tried this line of code, and it kept giving me the SyntaxError.

print('/' / '-' / '' / '|' * 30, end='
')
                                          ^

It pointed on the brackets.
Any suggestions? Thanks!

Answer 1

As already mentioned in comments, the immediate problem is the syntax error caused by the un-escaped , causing the to escape the following '. Next, there is the problem of / applied to strings... Python does not really know what you are trying to achieve with that.

From your choice of characters and the end=" ", I guess that you are trying to create some kind of "spinner" animation. For this, you could use modulo % to access the matching character, then use a proper for loop to print them. Also, you might have to flush the print stream besides resetting it to the start of the line, and you might want to add some waiting time in between.

import time
for i in range(30):
    print("/-\|"[i%4], end="
", flush=True)
    time.sleep(0.3)