why indentation should be part of the syntax

[BartC]

"Stefan Behnel" <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote in message 
news:mailman.7568.1393756930.18130.python-list at python.org...
> Haven't seen any mention of it on this list yet, but since it's such an
> obvious flaw in quite a number of programming languages, here's a good
> article on the recent security bug in iOS, which was due to accidentally
> duplicated code not actually being as indented as it looked:
>
> https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html

Indentation is actually a little more fragile than block-delimited source 
code. (Press Delete inadvertently so that a tab disappears, and the code 
might still be valid, but is now wrong.)

Perhaps indentation /and/ block-delimiting would be more robust.

(And the link shows a bad example: the error should have been picked up 
anyway, but the language not only doesn't require formal indentation, but it 
uses optional block ({}) delimiters, another source of errors. Having an 
undifferentiated } to close all kinds of blocks doesn't help either.

-- 
Bartc