Structure using whitespace vs logical whitespace

[Lie Ryan]

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:29:31 -0800, cmdrrickhunter at yaho.com wrote:

> I've been trying to search through the years of Python talk to find an
> answer to this, but my Googlefu is weak.
> 
> In most languages, I'll do something like this
> 
> xmlWriter.BeginElement("parent");
> ----xmlWriter.BeginElement("child");
> ----------xml.Writer.Characters("subtext"); ----xmlWriter.EndElement();
> xmlWriter.EndElement();
> 
> Where the dashes are indentation (since some newsgroup handlers don't do
> tabs well).  XML writing is just an example.
> 
> In general, I'm using indentation to show logical flow through code.
> Python's choice to give semantic meaning to whitespace prevents me from
> doing such things.  What was once reserved for logical use is now used
> syntactically.  In 90% of cases, its not needed, and whitespace
> significance seems to be pretty effective.  In that last 10%, however,
> I've been frustrated many times.
> 
> I've been using python for a few years, and gotten around this in one
> way or another, but now I want to get other who work with me to pick up
> Python.  All newbies to Python have trouble with the idea of whitespace
> sensitivity, but how can I convince them that "it just works better"
> when I have this construct which I want to use but can't.
> 
> Has anybody found a way to emulate this behavior?  I've often done it by
> opening an expression for the whole thing, but there's a lot of tasks
> where a single expression just isn't sufficient (such as things with
> assignment).
> 
> PS. In my opinion the solution would be to have the option of entering a
> "whitespace insensitive" mode which uses C style {} and ;.  The token to
> enter it could be as complicated as you want (in fact, it may make sense
> to make it complicated to discourage use unless it's really
> advantageous).  I'd sugest {{ and }} or something bigger like {={ } =}. 
> Only two problems: 1) I'm sure it would offend Guido's sense of language
> aesthetics  2) I'm sure the idea has been hashed over on this newsgroup
> to death... hence prefering a workaround instead.

It's possible (although no real python programmers would do it) to use a 
code preprocessor that would search for special marked sections in which 
spacing would be ignored and punctuations or end-of-block marker would be 
used to determine spacings.