Donald Knuth: Using Indentation to Represent Program Structure

http://jeremyhylton.blogspot.com/2006/06/using-indentation-to-represent-program.html

by hhm • 19 years ago

9 3 19 years ago

jeremyhylton.blogspot.com

jsnx• 19 years ago

The objection that, in the midst of a long document, telling what level of indentation one is at would be difficult is easily addressed by having the editor show space marks or using 'fold lines' in print -- neither of which is difficult.

In practice, though, I never have any problem with indentation based syntax, because change in indentation is easy enough to detect, and that's good enough for anything I've ever had to read.

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

When I work in Python, I find I need to use emacs' support for rectangle editing frequently when rearranging nested blocks.

anamax• 19 years ago

Indentation is merely horizontal positional information.

The idea of using position to convey information is very old - music is written using vertical position information.

Donald Knuth: Using Indentation to Represent Program Structure

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