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Whitespace as syntax (was Re: Python Rocks!)

Dennis Lee Bieber wlfraed at ix.netcom.com
Wed Feb 9 01:06:22 EST 2000 
On Tue, 08 Feb 2000 06:15:43 GMT, fcahoon at my-deja.com declaimed the
following in comp.lang.python:

> 
> Suppose that I'm one of those set-tabs-to-logical-indentation sorts of
> guys, so I set my tab width to 4, then look at this code in my editor.
> Gee, it sure _looks_ like statement4 belongs to "if condition1"!  And,
> if I convert tabs to spaces when I save, statement4 _will_ belong to "if
> condtion1".  I've just unwittingly changed the logic of the code!
> 
> You may, of course, argue that this is unlikely, but it is still
> plausible enough to make me _very_ nervous.
>
	And this only occurs when you take, as is, source from mixed
generators (pardon the odd language)...

	If you are talking a company level shop, both ISO 9000+ and SEI
tend to like lots of documentation of procedures (personally, I feel ISO
9000 goes too far into documented procedures and not enough into
product). If your shop is attempting to be ISO 9000 and/or SEI
certified, surely you would have some procedures defining coding
standards. In those standards, you could specify how Python indentation
is to be coded (spaces only, tabs only, mixed @ x-spaces per tab, etc.)

	By following these procedures you mitigate the "problem". The
only thing left is if you modify sources from outside the shop -- for
these, you should probably examine them for their "configuration" and
run them through a formatter to generate your shop's standard format.

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