Re: the war on trailing whitespace

From: Uwe Zeisberger <zeisberg@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
Date: Feb 27, 2006, 16:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20060227163709.GA12538@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <4403086F.5040704@op5.se>

Andreas Ericsson wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Uwe Zeisberger wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> >
> >>I think the question is whether completely empty lines are also ignored 
> >>by Python, or if they start a new block of code. Whatever the case, it 
> >>must hold true for both 2.3 and 2.4.
> >
> >see
> >	http://www.python.org/doc/2.2.3/ref/blank-lines.html
> >	http://www.python.org/doc/2.3.5/ref/blank-lines.html
> >	http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.2/ref/blank-lines.html
> >
> 
> So in essence, a multi-line statement is closed when a completely empty 
> line is found,

Wrong.

A logical line that contains only spaces, tabs, formfeeds and possibly a comment, is ignored (i.e., no NEWLINE token is generated). During interactive input of statements, handling of a blank line may differ depending on the implementation of the read-eval-print loop. In the standard implementation, an entirely blank logical line (i.e. one containing not even whitespace or a comment) terminates a multi-line statement.

To translate that to python:

  if not interactive:
    a line only containing whitespace is ignored.
  else:
    if standard implementation:
      empty line terminates multi-line statement
    else:
      dependent on implementation

i.e. In scripts, lines containing only (zero or more) whitespaces are ignored.

hth Uwe

-- 
Uwe Zeisberger

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