Sage-Tips

What is the purpose of indenting in coding?

Rather, indenting helps better convey the structure of a program to human readers. Especially, it is used to clarify the link between control flow constructs such as conditions or loops, and code contained within and outside of them.

What happens if I don’t indent my Python code?

Python indentation is an important concept to know even before you get started with coding in Python. This is because if you are not aware of how to indent a Python code, then you will end up seeing indentation errors and you code will not get compiled.

Why do people indent with spaces?

Explanation on accepted answer: If a couple of people work on same file it is highly possible to generate unnecessary conflicts. Using spaces instead of tabs makes it possible to easily catch such an accidental space on eyeball and this is probably a reason, why using them become a standard.

Why is indentation important in Python?

Indentation refers to the spaces at the beginning of a code line. Where in other programming languages the indentation in code is for readability only, the indentation in Python is very important. Python uses indentation to indicate a block of code.

What is indented block?

The IndentationError: expected an indented block error indicates that you have an indentation error in the code block, which is most likely caused by a mix of tabs and spaces. In python, the expected an indented block error is caused by a mix of tabs and spaces.

What is Python indentation?

Indentation in Python refers to the (spaces and tabs) that are used at the beginning of a statement. The statements with the same indentation belong to the same group called a suite. By default, Python uses four spaces for indentation, and the programmer can manage it.

Why is indentation necessary in Python?

Python uses indentation to highlight the blocks of code. Whitespace is used for indentation in Python. All statements with the same distance to the right belong to the same block of code. If a block has to be more deeply nested, it is simply indented further to the right.

What is 4 spaced indentation?

For example if you start off using four spaces for an indent, then you should always use four spaces. In the example below, four spaces have been used for the first indent, but only two for the second, and you can see that as a result the code doesn’t “line up”.

Does indentation matter Python?

Indentation is a very important concept of Python because without proper indenting the Python code, you will end up seeing IndentationError and the code will not get compiled.

Why do Python tabs have spaces?

Spaces are the preferred indentation method. Tabs should be used solely to remain consistent with code that is already indented with tabs. Python 3 disallows mixing the use of tabs and spaces for indentation. Python 2 code indented with a mixture of tabs and spaces should be converted to using spaces exclusively.

How do you reduce indentation in Python?

Select the lines to indent. Click and drag with your mouse to select the code (the last print statement), or press Shift while using your arrow keys. Choose Format → Indent Region. Ctrl+] also works.

What happens when you change the indentation in a program?

It depends on the programming language. In some programming languages, such as Python, indentation can actually express how a control structure should behave. Change the indentation, and you change the code’s behavior. In other languages, free-form languages like C and C++, indentation is optional but needed for readability.

Should you indent your code when writing?

And lastly, if you plan on pursuing a career in computer science or any similar career in which you write code, many companies will want you to properly indent your code as you write your programs. Basically, the general rule for indenting is that code between curly brackets should be indented.

What is the difference between indented and unindented code?

With unindented code, the overall structure of the code might be somewhat difficult to see. However, with indented code, the overall structure of the code jumps out at you. Tabs tell you that a line of code is inside a function, loop, if statement, or else statement.

What is the difference between indentation and looping?

In function definitions indentation denotes the code which is a part of the function (or subordinate to the function call). In looping constructs indentation denotes that part of the code within the loop (or subordinate to the loop constraints).