Re: Tabs As Syntax

On Wed, 20 Mar 2024 08:13:18 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

The usage of spaces or tabs to determine statement scope is a great big
turnoff for me.
>
I don't subscribe to Guido's opinion on the visual ease of indentation.

There is redundancy in how most reasonable programmers write their
code; in conventional languages, where there are explicit
statement-bracketing symbols, the indentation (which the compiler
ignores) tends to follow these symbols anyway. That redundancy is a
useful check that the code means what you think it means.

Python does away with that redundancy, by making the indentation serve
as statement-bracketing as well. I think this is a mistake. However, I
restore the redundancy by adding “#end” lines (which the compiler
ignores). E.g.

    def parse_headers() :
        nonlocal content_type, content_type_opts
        for keyword, value in scope["headers"] :
            keyword = keyword.decode().lower()
            if keyword == "content-type" :
                content_type = value.decode()
            elif keyword == "cookie" :
                for item in value.decode().split(";") :
                    name, val = item.strip().replace(" ", "").split("=", 1)
                    cookies[name] = val
                #end for
            #end if
        #end for
        if content_type != None :
            content_type, content_type_opts = \
                multipart.multipart.parse_options_header(content_type)
            content_type = content_type.decode()
            content_type_opts = dict((k.decode(), v) for k, v in content_type_opts.items())
        #end if
    #end parse_headers

Another useful consequence is, I have custom Emacs commands defined to
jump between lines with matching indentation. This lets me navigate
quickly between the start and end of statement blocks. Without those
“#end” lines, it would not be so easy to find the ends of the blocks.