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The if clause body starts on line 3 since it is indented an additional level, and ends on line 4 since line 5 is indented a level less, a.k.a. outdented. The colon (:) at the end of a control statement line is Python syntax; not an aspect of the off-side rule. The rule can be realized without such colon syntax.
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.
There are three main types of indentation: first-line, hanging and block. Each example below is in a box that represents the page boundary and uses the common typesetting lorem ipsum content. The width of indentation here is in units of em spaces. For first-line indentation the first line of a paragraph is indented, U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR
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:
A block is a grouping of code that is treated collectively. Many block syntaxes can consist of any number of items (statements, expressions or other units of code) – including one or zero. Languages delimit a block in a variety of ways – some via marking text and others by relative formatting such as levels of indentation.
Another example: when the spaces between words line up approximately above one another in several loose lines, a distracting river of white space may appear. [4] Rivers appear in right-aligned, left-aligned and centered settings too, but are more likely to appear in justified text, because of the additional word spacing.
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.
The biggest difference between the two is the location of the braces: in the GNU style, opening and closing braces are on lines by themselves, with the same indent. BSD style places an opening brace at the end of the preceding line, and the closing braces can be followed by else. The size of indent and location of whitespace also differs.