Helper function for formatting the content of the options line

def format_options(options):
    '''Helper function for formatting the content of the options line'''
    # split on one of the following tokens: ' -' or '[[' or ']]'
    lines = ['']
    for token in re.split(r'( -|\[\[|\]\])', options):
        if token in ['[[',']]']:
            lines.append(token)
            lines.append('')
        elif token == ' -':
            lines.append(token)
        else:
            lines[-1] += token
    # join all non-empty lines and wrap them into 'span'-tags
    return '<span style="display:block">' + '</span><span style="display:block">'.join(line for line in lines if line.strip()) + '</span>'