On 03/02/2015 15:25, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Syd Rumpo
wrote:

On 03/02/2015 13:49, Tim Streater wrote:

snip

Whitespace should *not* be significant; there are no other contexts in
life in which it is. This idea is just a throwback to the days of
FORTRAN.

Whitespaceshould*not*besignificant;therearenoother contextsinlifeinwhichitis.


Very witty; have a banana.

Consider my OP to be altered to "Whitespace beyond a single whitespace
char should not be significant ...".

I'm sure there's a proper phrase that "whitespace other than a single
separator char should have no lexical/semantic/syntactic significance
..." or similar and no doubt a proper computer scientist will be along
in a minute to correct me.

I know nothing of Python. In Forth (that most noble of languages)
whitespace - whether one or more spaces, tabs, returns or line feeds -
is essentially the only separator.

So I'd agree with your modified statement. I remember a long time back
having to count the spaces when entering numbers into a Fortran program,
otherwise you'd get a wrong answer.

Oh, thanks for the banana.

Cheers
--
Syd