Colons, indentation and reformatting.
Paddy
paddy3118 at netscape.net
Tue Jan 9 01:12:25 EST 2007
i was just perusing a Wikipedia entry on the "off side rule" at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-side_rule .
It says that the colon in Python is purely for readability, and cites
our FAQ entry
http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general.html#why-are-colons-required-for-the-if-while-def-class-statements
.
However, near the top of the Alternatives section, it states that for C
type, curly braces using languages:
"An advantage of this is that program code can be automatically
reformatted and neatly indented without fear of the block structure
changing".
Thinking about it a little, it seems that a colon followed by
non-indented code that has just been pasted in could also be used by a
Python-aware editor as a flag to re-indent the pasted code.
Tell me it is not so, or I will be editing the Wikipedia page I think.
And if it is true then do we need to update the FAQ?
- Paddy.
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