Continuing indentation

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Rob Gaddi <rgaddi at highlandtechnology.invalid>:

> Not ugly, error-prone. The first is purely aestehetic, the second
> actually matters. Let something as simple as a trailing space sneak in
> after your backslash and your meaning changes. Blank line between;
> same thing.

Never been bitten by that.

Now, trying how emacs' indentation would react to such a syntax error, I
notice:

    if some_condition \ 
    and some_other_condition \
        and some_final_condition:
    play_bingo()

The misalignment is a surefire way to notice something is fishy (in all
programming languages).

> But the principle remains. Syntactic whitespace has its ups and downs
> on the leading edge of the line, but at least it's visible there. On
> the trailing end of the line it's actively inviting trouble in for
> coffee and eggs.

Continuation lines with backslashes are all over the place: make, bash,
C, Python. I can't remember such accidents taking place.

Now, *leading* whitespace causes all kinds of mischief including jagged
diffs and syntax errors.


Marko