Is it possible to have a variable span multiple lines in Robot Framework?

Question

I have a very long regex that I would like to put into a variable to test with. I'd like to be able to put it on multiple lines so that it's not so unreadable. I saw you could do multiple lines with the documentation tag. But when I try this formatting, Robot seems to think this is a list. Is there a way to do this in Robot Framework?

Consider:

${example_regex} =      '(?m)Setting IP address to [0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\nSetting MAC address to [0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}\nSetting IP forwarding kernel options'

I would like to be able to write:

${example_regex}   '(?m)Setting IP address to [0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\n
                     Setting MAC address to [0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}\n
                     Setting IP forwarding kernel options'

Answer 1

In a Variables table

If you are creating the strings in a *** Variables *** table, you can spread the definition across multiple lines. You can use a special argument SEPARATOR to define how the cells are joined together. By default the lines are joined by a space, so you'll want to set it to the empty string by explicitly not giving SEPARATOR a value.

See Variable table in the user guide for more information.

*** Variables ***
${example_regex}=  SEPARATOR=
...  (?m)Setting IP address to [0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\n
...  Setting MAC address to [0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}\\n
...  Setting IP forwarding kernel options

In a test case or keyword

If you are trying to do this in a test case or keyword, you can't directly define a multiline string. However, you can get the same effect using the catenate keyword in a test case or keyword to join data which is spread across multiple cells. Be sure to properly escape your backslashes, and set the separator character to an empty string if you don't want newlines in the data.

*** Test Cases ***
Multiline variable example
  ${example_regex}=  catenate  SEPARATOR=
  ...  (?m)Setting IP address to [0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\n
  ...  Setting MAC address to [0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}:[0-9a-f]{2}\\n
  ...  Setting IP forwarding kernel options
  log  regex: '${example_regex}'