[sf-perl] Python indentation grumble

Rich Morin rdm at cfcl.com
Sun Apr 2 00:16:16 PST 2006


pywikipediabot is (fairly obviously) a Python-based framework
for writing bots to crawl Wikipedia (or really, MediaWiki)
pages.  In trying to configure this, I found myself writing
tiny bits of Python, commenting out some lines, etc:

vvvv
family = 'ontiki'
usernames['ontiki']['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
# usernames['None']['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
^^^^

Because I don't like the way this looks, I tried indenting
all of the code to a consistent base level, as:

vvvv
  family = 'ontiki'
  usernames['ontiki']['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
# usernames['None']['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
^^^^

However, this offends the interpreter quite drastically:

vvvv
...
    family = 'ontiki'
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
^^^^

So, I get to decide whether to give up on my preferred
style of indentation or hack around the interpreter.  As
you might expect, I chose the latter:

vvvv
if 1 == 1:     # Kludge around indentation brain-damage.

  family = 'ontiki'
  usernames['ontiki']['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
# usernames['None'  ]['en'] = 'RichMorinBot'
^^^^

!@#$%

-r
-- 
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


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