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In computer programming, indentation style is a convention, a.k.a. style, governing the indentation of blocks of source code.An indentation style generally involves consistent width of whitespace (indentation size) before each line of a block, so that the lines of code appear to be related, and dictates whether to use space or tab characters for the indentation whitespace.
Proper code formatting makes it easier to read and understand. Different programmers often prefer different styles of formatting, such as the use of code indentation and whitespace or positioning of braces. A code formatter or code indenter converts source code from one format style to another. This is relatively straightforward because of the ...
The rules a compiler applies to the source creates implicit standards. For example, Python code is much more consistently indented than, say Perl, because whitespace (indentation) is actually significant to the interpreter. Python does not use the brace syntax Perl uses to delimit functions. Changes in indentation serve as the delimiters.
The off-side rule describes syntax of a computer programming language that defines the bounds of a code block via indentation. [1] [2]The term was coined by Peter Landin, possibly as a pun on the offside law in association football.
Indentation style can assist a reader in various way including: identifying control flow and blocks of code. In some programming languages, indentation is used to delimit blocks of code and therefore is not matter of style. In languages that ignore whitespace, indentation can affect readability. For example, formatted in a commonly-used style:
Python borrows this feature from its predecessor ABC: instead of punctuation or keywords, it uses indentation to indicate the run of a block. In so-called "free-format" languages—that use the block structure derived from ALGOL—blocks of code are set off with braces ({ }) or keywords.
In computer programming, indentation describes formatting source code with whitespace to the left of code text – often to visually show that a sequence of code lines is syntactically a code block. Typically, the lines of a block are aligned with an amount of white space that indicates the block's depth in the hierarchical structure of the code.
Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language.Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. [33]Python is dynamically type-checked and garbage-collected.