All leading tabs or all leading spaces - why isn't that enforced?

One can argue over tab vs. space indentation, but mixing the two
is just wrong. Why not have CPython report an error if a file has
both leading tabs and leading spaces? I know that was proposed at
some point, but I don't think it ever went in. That would catch a
common error introduced during maintenance.

John Nagle

 

I suppose we Pythonistas are just too permissive for our own good.
Consider the opportunity to use mixed tabs and spaces a piece of rope of
your preferred length ...

regards
Steve
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I suppose we Pythonistas are just too permissive for our own good.

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that Python 3000 will ban tabs
as indentation characters, but now I can't turn up a link for it...

 

Tabs are going to be banned in the C Style Guide for Python 3000
source code, but they aren't being banned from Python 3000 code.

 

While I agree it should be default, you can enable extra checking with
-tt. Eg.

% jhexdump /tmp/abcd.py
0x00000000: 2321 202F 7573 722F 6269 6E2F 7079 7468 #! /usr/bin/pyth
0x00000010: 6F6E 202D 7474 0A0A 6966 2054 7275 653A on -tt..if True:
0x00000020: 0A09 7072 696E 7420 2261 220A 2020 2020 ..print "a".
0x00000030: 2020 2020 7072 696E 7420 2262 220A print "b".
% /tmp/abcd.py
File "/tmp/abcd.py", line 5
print "b"
^
TabError: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation
% python /tmp/abcd.py
a
b

....note that this doesn't require all spaces or all tabs, just that
their usage has to be consistent.