python newbie: some surprises

[Kees Bakker]

Gabriel Genellina wrote:

> En Fri, 09 May 2008 10:37:30 -0300, v4vijayakumar <vijayakumar.subburaj at gmail.com> escribió:
> 
>> On May 9, 1:48 pm, Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno.
>> 42.desthuilli... at websiteburo.invalid> wrote:
>>> v4vijayakumar a écrit :
>>>
>>> > When I started coding in python, these two things surprised me.
>>>
>>> > 1. my code is inconsistently indented with the combination of tabs and
>>> > spaces. Even lines looked intended, but it is not.
>>>
>>> Then you have a problem with your code editor - not with Python.
>>>
>>
>> Editors can not be wrong. :)
>>
>> I think there should be some way to say python compiler, to consider
>> tab and two blank spaces equal, when tab space = 2.
> 
> It already considers tab = 8 spaces, and when invoked with -tt it rejects mixed tabs+spaces. (I would like Python rejected *any* tab used for indenting...)
> There is a tool 'reindent.py' -somewhere on your Python install-, and an indentation checker 'tabnanny.py' (this one in the standard library).
> 

That's one of the reasons why I like Python :-)

Still too many people don't know that you must set a TAB to 8 in
your editor. Anything other than 8 for a TAB will, at some point,
confuse somebody.

Don't confuse indentation with TAB setting.

Many editors are not helpfull either. Pydev, for example, has a setting
for TAB, but it is used for indentation. It is just luck (I think) that
pydev has an option to say that you only want spaces. (Take a look at
the main preferences of Pydev.)

So far, I have seen only one editor that understands the difference between
TABs and indentation, and that is Emacs.
-- 
Kees