Why Python style guide (PEP-8) says 4 space indents instead of 8 space??? 8 space indents ever ok??

[David C. Fox]

Christian Seberino wrote:
> Linux kernel style guide, Guido's C style guide and (I believe) old
> K&R style recommends 8 SPACES for indent.
> 
> I finally got convinced of wisdom of 8 space indentation.
> 
> Guido also likes 8 space indentation FOR C CODE.
> 
> Why style guide (PEP-8) for Python says 4 space indents???
> 
> Is breaking rule to use 8 space indents everywhere
> a REALLY bad idea??
> 
> I REALLY WANT TO DO MY OPEN SOURCE PYTHON PROJECT
> WITH 8 SPACE IDENTS!!!!
> 
> Chris

I don't have an official answer, but here are my guesses:

a)

In C, new lines are generally like any other white space (except within 
strings, C++ // comments), so you can easily put new lines in the middle 
of an expression.

In Python, newlines are significant, except within lists, tuples, etc. 
and a few other cases, so you generally have to escape them with \ 
within statements.  If you use 8-space indents in Python, you very 
quickly end up having to escape a lot of new lines, which is annoying.

b)

Unless you have an editor which converts tabs to a fixed number of 
spaces, typing 8 spaces is a pain.  Even editors which do convert tabs 
to spaces may not provide an easy way to un-indent by the same number of 
spaces

--------

Of course, both these reasons would imply that 2 spaces was better than 
4.  Using 4 spaces was probably chosen as a compromise between points a) 
and b) and making sure that the indentation level was clearly visible.

David