call the function re.compile with 2 arguments: raw string "((?:[^\s'"]*(?:(?:"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*" | '(?:[^'\\]|\\.)*')[^\s'"]*)+) | \+)",
smart_split_re = re . compile ( r""" ((?: [^\s'"]* (?: (?:"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*" | '(?:[^'\\]|\\.)*') [^\s'"]* )+ ) | \S+) """ , re . VERBOSE )