[Python-ideas] Minor tweak to PEP 8?

[Steven D'Aprano]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> At Google we use the following rule (from
> http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pyguide.html#Indentation):
> 
> Yes:  # Aligned with opening delimiter
>        foo = long_function_name(var_one, var_two,
>                                var_three, var_four)

I cringe whenever I see that. If people are going to bother lining 
things up other than at 4-space indents, they should at least line them 
up in a visually attractive place. The delimiter should surround the 
arguments, not line up with them:

         foo = long_function_name(var_one, var_two,
                                  var_three, var_four)

although the effect may be spoiled if you're reading this in a 
non-monospaced font. This is analogous to the way that professional 
typesetters use handing punctuation:

http://desktoppub.about.com/od/typelayout/ss/hangingquotes.htm

    "Li Europan lingues es membres del sam familie. Lor separat
     existentie es un myth. Por scientie, musica, sport etc, litot
     Europa usa li sam vocabular. Li lingues differe solmen in li
     grammatica, li pronunciation e li plu commun vocabules."

compared to:

     "Li Europan lingues es membres del sam familie. Lor separat
     existentie es un myth. Por scientie, musica, sport etc, litot
     Europa usa li sam vocabular. Li lingues differe solmen in li
     grammatica, li pronunciation e li plu commun vocabules."


On the other hand, there's a good argument for not spending the time to 
neatly line up blocks of code (other than at the usual multiples of four 
spaces), whether it is to the delimiter or not. It's the same argument 
against doing this:

fee_fi_fo_fum = "something"       # Align the equals
foo           = "something else"  # and/or the hashes.

When actively changing code lined up like that, you can easily spend 
more time aligning things than programming.

I have a hard time reconciling the advice in PEP 8 against such 
alignments with the current suggestion.


-- 
Steven