LaTeX is not letting me add spaces in strings in lstlistings

Question

I am trying to add some code to my document, but whenever there is a space inside a string in the code, it shows up with a bucket(?) thing. I have provided the code and the output below:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage{listings}
\begin{document}

\section*{Code}
\begin{lstlisting}[language=python]
# comment
a = 24
print (a)
string = "some string"
\end{lstlisting}

\end{document}

Answer 1

This is not a bug, it is a feature! With your current settings, spaces inside a string will be visualized using this "bucket", as you call it. This can be especially helpful if you have more than one space.

If you do not want them you can disable them by setting showstringspaces=false, either only for your current listing (option 1) or for the whole document (option 2).

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage{listings}
%\lstset{showstringspaces=false} % option 1

\begin{document}
\section*{Code}
\begin{lstlisting}[
    language=python,
    showstringspaces=false, % option 2
]
# comment
a = 24
print (a)
string = "some string"
\end{lstlisting}
\end{document}

You could even enable this for "normal" spaces, i.e. outside of strings, by setting showspaces=true, if you want to.