This looks like bad coding style to me--trying to cram too much on a line and an overly complex conditional expression. Using the same three lines, you could i

This looks like bad coding style to me--trying to cram too much on a line and an overly complex conditional expression. Using the same three lines, you could instead assign each result to a temporary var: x = outputs.get("foo.bar.baz", "default") y = pytest.approx(time_recorder.time_taken, abs=0.0001) assert x == y If using an assert method, I think this looks okay too (although still a bit noisy): self.assertEqual( outputs.get("foo.bar.baz", "default"), pytest.approx(time_recorder.time_taken, abs=0.0001), ) I find that if black produces ugly output, it's usually because of something that I could improve, and I appreciate the hint.