newbie question

[Julia Osip]

Didnt realise I was posting into an existing topic.  Whitespace was
the problem, its working now.  Will consider the mailing list in the
future.  Thanks very much for your help!


Sean 'Shaleh' Perry <shaleh at speakeasy.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.8.1072918504.12720.python-list at python.org>...
> On Wednesday 31 December 2003 16:14, Julia Osip wrote:
> > Hi, just started fiddling around with python, having some difficulty
> > getting the following small play program to execute.  Furious
> > searching in the docs, manual, newsgroup did not avail me, does anyone
> > have any ideas what might be the problem?  Some sort of whitespace
> > issue (im still unsure of whitespace rules)?  I'm running Mac OS
> > 10.2.8, with MacPython 2.3.
> >
> 
> you might consider joining the tutor at python.org mailing list.  It is meant to 
> help people new to python.
> 
> > Thanks for any help you can give...
> >
> > the code
> > ...snip...
> >
> > the error
> > ...snip...
> >   File "<string>", line 7
> >     def __init__(self):
> >     ^
> > SyntaxError: invalid syntax
> > ...snip...
> 
> As you guessed it is a whitespace problem.  So, let's clear up the whitespace 
> rules for you.
> 
> There is one key rule -- be consistent.  Python does not really care if you 
> use 4 space indents or 8.  It does care if you try to use both.  Same goes 
> for mixing spaces and tabs.  As Python reads your code it figures out what 
> your indent style is and then enforces that for the rest of the block.
> 
> When Python read your class definition the first indentation it found was for 
> the docstring which was 4 spaces.  Then it went to the next line of code and 
> found an indentation of 8.  This is what caused the error.  Now, maybe this 
> is because you hand indented the docstring by four spaces and then used a tab 
> on the line starting with 'def'.  Or maybe you thought you needed to indent 
> again (you don't).