Python indentation

[Dan Bishop]

Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote in message news:<slrncentbi.ak.grante at grante.rivatek.com>...
> On 2004-07-07, Reinhold Birkenfeld <reinhold-birkenfeld-nospam at wolke7.net> wrote:
> 
> >> I am a beginner in Python, and am wondering what is it about
> >> the indentation in Python, without which python scripts do not
> >> work properly. Why can't the indentation not so strict so as
> >> to give better freedom to the user? Is there any plausible
> >> reason behind this?
> >
> > Yes. It's about readability.
> >
> > In many languages, such as C or Perl, you can write readable code, but
> > you can also squeeze your code in as few lines as possible, resulting in
> > hard to read, hard to maintain, hard to debug code[1]. Whenever I
> > translate a Perl script into Python, I end up with about 25-40% more
> > lines, but the script is much more readable than the Perl counterpart
> > (mostly, of course, because of the lacking $'s ;).
> 
> Compare C and Python:
> 
> In C, we have 10 lines [compared to 6 in Python]
> 
>   if (condition)
>     {
>       doThis();
>       doThat();
>     }
>   else
>     {
>       doWhatever();
>       andSoOn();      
>     }    

Only because you're using an inefficient brace style.

The style I use writes it as:

   if (condition) {
      doThis();
      doThat();
   } else {
      doWhatever();
      andSoOn();
   }

which is 7 lines, only 1 more than the Python version.

But this does demonstrate an advantage of Python: No arguments over
where to put braces :-)