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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.
Although this example page about how to indent is an essay, the use of normal indentation is a behavioural guideline that editors are expected to follow. Such guidelines may be enforced by administrative action, especially when other editors have been unable to persuade an individual to abide by them.
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:
(non-Unicode name) ('Scarab' is an informal name for the generic currency sign) § Section sign: section symbol, section mark, double-s, 'silcrow' Pilcrow; Semicolon: Colon ℠ Service mark symbol: Trademark symbol / Slash (non-Unicode name) Division sign, Forward Slash: also known as "stroke" / Solidus (the most common of the slash symbols ...
Syntax highlighting and indent style are often used to aid programmers in recognizing elements of source code. This Python code uses color-coded highlighting. In computer science , the syntax of a computer language is the rules that define the combinations of symbols that are considered to be correctly structured statements or expressions in ...
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.
[h] Do not evade the formatting applied by a parameter, e.g. by using markup tricks or by switching to an inapplicable parameter simply because its style of output is different. [ i ] A parameter with useful citation data should not be omitted just because the auto-applied style is not in agreement with text-formatting guidelines; that is a ...