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As in curly bracket languages, whitespace is mostly ignored by the reader (i.e., the read function). Whitespace is used to separate tokens. [5] The explicit structure of Lisp code allows automatic indenting, to form a visual cue for human readers. Another alternative is for each block to begin and end with explicit keywords.
For a free-form language, whitespace characters are ignored by code processors (i.e. compiler). Even when language syntax requires white space, often multiple whitespace characters are treated the same as a single. In an off-side rule language, indentation white space is syntactically significant.
In computer programming, indentation style is a convention, a.k.a. style, governing the indentation of blocks of source code.An indentation style generally involves consistent width of whitespace (indentation size) before each line of a block, so that the lines of code appear to be related, and dictates whether to use space or tab characters for the indentation whitespace.
As a consequence of its syntax, Whitespace source code can be contained within the whitespace of code written in a language that ignores whitespace – making the text a polyglot. [2] Whitespace is an imperative, stack-based language. The programmer can push arbitrary-width integer values onto a stack and access a heap to store data.
The rules a compiler applies to the source creates implicit standards. For example, Python code is much more consistently indented than, say Perl, because whitespace (indentation) is actually significant to the interpreter. Python does not use the brace syntax Perl uses to delimit functions. Changes in indentation serve as the delimiters.
A free-format language ignores whitespace characters: spaces, tabs and new lines so the programmer is free to style the code in different ways without affecting the meaning of the code. Generally, the programmer uses style that is considered to enhance readability. The two code snippets below are the same logically, but differ in whitespace.
A block is a grouping of code that is treated collectively. Many block syntaxes can consist of any number of items (statements, expressions or other units of code) – including one or zero. Languages delimit a block in a variety of ways – some via marking text and others by relative formatting such as levels of indentation.
Python borrows this feature from its predecessor ABC: instead of punctuation or keywords, it uses indentation to indicate the run of a block. In so-called "free-format" languages—that use the block structure derived from ALGOL—blocks of code are set off with braces ({ }) or keywords.