Triple-quoted strings hath not the Python-nature

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:11:34 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In message <010fec39$0$20657$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, Steven D'Aprano
> wrote:
> 
>> I disagree. Triple-quoted strings are exactly the same as other
>> strings: they capture *exactly* what you put in them ...
> 
> But that conflicts with the use of whitespace for indentation rules.

No it doesn't. Indentation is a token in Python source code. Strings are 
a data type. Syntax rules don't apply to strings because strings are 
data, not syntax.

You wouldn't expect the following string literal to raise a syntax error:

"if Time = Money then ..."

Nor does the string "C++", and the string "1/0" doesn't raise 
ZeroDivisionError. Strings are data, not syntax. Except for the syntactic 
sugar of escape sequences, the contents of strings have no syntax.

(I say content to distinguish it from the delimiters themselves.)

Why should whitespace in string literals be treated as syntactic tokens 
when no other characters are? 


[...]
> In short, if whitespace is significant outside a string, then it
> shouldn't be significant inside. And vice versa.

That's an arbitrary rule that makes no sense at all. It's not just 
arbitrary, it's *stupid*. Why on earth should the string literal

s = """
    text
 aligned
      to
     the
   right
     """

raise an IndentationError? Or should it be a SyntaxError?


-- 
Steven