Learning Python - Mark Lutz [161]
This cannot happen in Python—because indentation is significant, the way the code looks is the way it will work. Consider an equivalent Python statement:
if x:
if y:
statement1
else:
statement2
In this example, the if that the else lines up with vertically is the one it is associated with logically (the outer if x). In a sense, Python is a WYSIWYG language—what you see is what you get because the way code looks is the way it runs, regardless of who coded it.
If this still isn’t enough to underscore the benefits of Python’s syntax, here’s another anecdote. Early in my career, I worked at a successful company that developed systems software in the C language, where consistent indentation is not required. Even so, when we checked our code into source control at the end of the day, this company ran an automated script that analyzed the indentation used in the code. If the script noticed that we’d indented our code inconsistently, we received an automated email about it the next morning—and so did our managers!
The point is that even when a language doesn’t require it, good programmers know that consistent use of indentation has a huge impact on code readability and quality. The fact that Python promotes this to the level of syntax is seen by most as a feature of the language.
Also keep in mind that nearly every programmer-friendly text editor has built-in support for Python’s syntax model. In the IDLE Python GUI, for example, lines of code are automatically indented when you are typing a nested block; pressing the Backspace key backs up one level of indentation, and you can customize how far to the right IDLE indents statements in a nested block. There is no universal standard on this: four spaces or one tab per level is common, but it’s up to you to decide how and how much you wish to indent. Indent further to the right for further nested blocks, and less to close the prior block.
As a rule of thumb, you probably shouldn’t mix tabs and spaces in the same block in Python, unless you do so consistently; use tabs or spaces in a given block, but not both (in fact, Python 3.0 now issues an error for inconsistent use of tabs and spaces, as we’ll see in Chapter 12). But you probably shouldn’t mix tabs or spaces in indentation in any structured language—such code can cause major readability issues if the next programmer has his or her editor set to display tabs differently than yours. C-like languages might let coders get away with this, but they shouldn’t: the result can be a mangled mess.
I can’t stress enough that regardless of which language you code in, you should be indenting consistently for readability. In fact, if you weren’t taught to do this earlier in your career, your teachers did you a disservice. Most programmers—especially those who must read others’ code—consider it a major asset that Python elevates this to the level of syntax. Moreover, generating tabs instead of braces is no more difficult in practice for tools that must output Python code. In general, if you do what you should be doing in a C-like language anyhow, but get rid of the braces, your code will satisfy Python’s syntax rules.
A Few Special Cases
As mentioned previously, in Python’s syntax model:
The end of a line terminates the statement on that line (without semicolons).
Nested statements are blocked and associated by their physical indentation (without braces).
Those rules cover almost all Python code you’ll write or see in practice. However, Python also provides some special-purpose rules that allow customization of both statements and nested statement blocks.
Statement rule special cases
Although statements normally appear one per line, it is possible to squeeze more than one statement onto a single line in Python by separating them with semicolons:
a = 1; b = 2; print(a + b) # Three statements on one line
This is the only place in Python where semicolons are required: as statement separators. This only works, though, if the statements thus combined are not themselves compound statements.