Passing indented code to compile()

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
|>     def LeftMargin(txt):
|>         """Remove as many leading spaces as possible from whole block"""
|>         for l in range(12,-1,-1):
|>             re_lead = '(?sm)'+' '*l+'\S'
|>             if re.match(re_lead, txt): break
|>         txt = re.sub('(?sm)^'+' '*l, '', txt)
|>         return txt

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote previously:
|def leftMargin(lines):
|    def numblanks(line):
|        return len(line)-len(line.lstrip(' '))
|    minblanks = min([numblanks(line) for line in lines])
|    return [line[minblanks:] for line in lines]

I can declare that I officially like Alex' version better than mine.
The 12 space max wasn't really an issue for me, since in my text files I
would simply not indent more than that.  But in the OP's XML context,
that is not safe.

Moreover, my version also treats the first line in a special way.  I
vaguely recall there was once a reason I had to do that for my spec...
but I cannot think of why right now (I wrote the thing before there were
listcomps, so that's a hint to its antiquity).  It may have involved a
case like that Alex shows where I actually -wanted- the special behavior
(but I probably dropped it from my markup conventions).

Yours, Lulu...

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