|Use of punctuation in a language? firstname.lastname@example.org (Herbert) (2003-10-31)|
|Re: Use of punctuation in a language? email@example.com (Joachim Durchholz) (2003-11-08)|
|Re: Use of punctuation in a language? firstname.lastname@example.org (Ray Dillinger) (2003-11-11)|
|Significant indentation email@example.com (Joachim Durchholz) (2003-11-21)|
|Re: Significant indentation firstname.lastname@example.org (Ray Dillinger) (2003-12-03)|
|From:||Joachim Durchholz <email@example.com>|
|Date:||21 Nov 2003 00:33:26 -0500|
|Organization:||Oberberg Online Infosysteme|
|References:||03-10-129 03-11-024 03-11-053|
|Posted-Date:||21 Nov 2003 00:33:26 EST|
Ray Dillinger wrote:
>>For example, you can get away without semicolons for statement
>>separators if you use indentation and/or distinctive keywords.
> I still think significant indentation is annoying. When code gets
> moved from point A to point B, it frequently changes indentation
That's a Python-specific problem. It's a bad idea to equate a tab
character with 8 spaces.
Also, the issues are made worse by braindead editors that try to
compress source code by replacing 8 spaces with one tab, without
recognizing that there are editors out there that display a tab as 3
spaces. Or 5 spaces. Or whatever the user had set of the indentation
level. The worst source code that I had to work with had indentation
levels of 3 spaces, and the editor had done that 8-spaces-for-one-tab
replacement - I had my indentation level set to 2 and didn't see much of
a structure anymore :-(
Fortunately, most editors with braindead tab handling can be configured
to work differently. It's a problem with tools, not a problem with the
concept per se.
> Significant indentation means I can't just let my editor
> autoindent it for me.
If the editor automatically replicates the leading space of the previous
line for new lines, you have all the autoindentation support you'd ever
Instead of tying an opening a brace, you type an additional single tab
in the first line of the block; instead of typing a closing brace, you
backspace over the last of those automatically-provided tabs.
Instead of removing a pair of braces, you unindent a block, adding a
pair of braces is equivalent to indenting.
From the perspective of source code manipulation, I don't see much of a
difference - it's roughly the same number of keypresses. From the
perspective of source code inspection, it's a clear win: less syntactic
clutter on the screen (and less holy wars on the "proper indentation
style" as a fringe benefit).
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