[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I wrote my first Python in a non-Python-aware editor, and somehow had > swapped tabs and spaces; when I moved it to IDLE---the indentation > *looked fine* but was invisibly weird.
That can admittedly be a problem. It would help if the parser complained by default about mixed use of tabs and spaces in a single file, instead of silently assuming tab stops every 8 spaces (an historical misfeature that we still have for the time being). Probably this will change in Python 3.0. Personally I find Python pleasant enough to work with that I'm willing to put up with the odd screwup like that happening now and then. And they really don't happen all that often -- once you've experienced it a few times, you learn how to guard against it and get better at fixing it when it does happen. > I will even admit that white-space significance does not > materially increase errors among experienced Pythonistas. What it isn't > is some kind of miraculous invention that saves programmers from ever > making mistakes that are common in other languages, We don't claim that -- only that it's not the unmitigated disaster than some people assume it will be without ever having tried it. -- Greg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
