Are there any pitfalls with using whitespace in Python?

Question

At the moment I have never had a problem with whitespace in Python (although I\'ve only used it in two projects and I was the only programmer). What are some potential pitf

Answer 1

Pitfalls

• It can be annoying posting code snippets on web sites that ignore your indentation.

• Its hard to see how multi-line anonymous functions (lambdas) can fit in with the syntax of the language.

• It makes it hard to embed Python in HTML files to make templates in the way that PHP or C# can be embedded in PHP or ASP.NET pages. But that's not necessarily the best way to design templates anyway.

• If your editor does not have sensible commands for block indent and outdent it will be tedious to realign code.

Advantages

• Forces even lazy programmers to produce legible code. I've seen examples of brace-language code that I had to spend hours reformatting to be able to read it...

• Python programmers do not need to spend hours discussing whether braces should go at the ends of lines K&R style or on lines on their own in the Microsoft style.

• Frees the brace characters for use for dictionary and set expressions.

• Is automatically pretty legible