Passing indented code to compile()

[Harvey Thomas]

John Wilson wrote:
> 
> "Skip Montanaro" <skip at pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:16057.4093.350907.487297 at montanaro.dyndns.org...
> >     Peter> As Harvey points out, this kind of thing is not 
> how XML ... was
> >     Peter> intended to be used.
> >
> > I sort of suspect that's true of most of the tasks to which XML is
> applied.
> > <0.2 wink>
> 
> 
> Although, in this case, it's being used to mark up text - 
> which is certainly
> what it was originally intended for.
> 
> Even the use of attributes here is arguably in the spirit of 
> the original
> intent ;-))))
> 

XML, from it's SGML document background is intended to markup the structure of a document, not its presentation, so in the true spirit of XML the fragment:

if a:
    b = c
    if d:
        e = f
    else:
        e = g
else:
    b = h
    e = i

should be marked up as something like:

<execute globals="globals" locals="locals">
<codeline>if a:</codeline>
  <suite>
    <codeline>b = c:</codeline>
    <codeline>if d:</codeline>
    <suite>
      <codeline>e = f</codeline>
    </suite>
    <codeline>else:</codeline>
      <suite>
        <codeline>e = g</codeline>
    </suite>
  </suite>
<codeline>else:</codeline>
  <suite>
     <codeline>b = h</codeline>
     <codeline>e = i</codeline>
  </suite>
</execute>

The indentation is purely for aesthetic purposes, and if all white space between tags were removed, the document would be structurally the same. I don't find the above very readable. In my view XML is not a good vehicle for representing Python code.

Harvey
       

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