Indentation for if in python when using emacs and python-mode

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I use a four space indent which causes problems when indenting if statements that span multiple lines. For example:

if (a
    and b
    and c):
    if_block_here

The problem is caused because if is two characters and therefore if ( is four characters--which matches the four space indent. I end up with code where I can't easily distinguish if statement from the if block.

After talking about it with Paul and Chris and working out what the specifics of the problem are, I decided to use double parens. The above with double-parens looks like this:

if ((a
     and b
     and c)):
    if_block_here

That satisfies PEP-8, doesn't change the semantics, and fixes my problem. It is a little goofy to use double parens, but it's a good enough fix until I get around to fiddling with the code that does automatic indentation in python-mode.

I'd be interested in other ideas that don't involve using \ at the end of lines if they're out there.

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