Python: Myths about Indentation

"Whitespace is significant in Python source code."

No, not in general. Only the indentation level of your statements is significant (i.e. the whitespace at the very left of your statements). Everywhere else, whitespace is not significant and can be used as you like, just like in any other language. You can also insert empty lines that contain nothing (or only arbitrary whitespace) anywhere.

Also, the exact amount of indentation doesn't matter at all, but only the relative indentation of nested blocks (relative to each other).

Furthermore, the indentation level is ignored when you use explicit or implicit continuation lines. For example, you can split a list across multiple lines, and the indentation is completely insignificant. So, if you want, you can do things like this:

>>> foo = [
...            'some string',
...         'another string',
...           'short string'
... ]
>>> print foo
['some string', 'another string', 'short string']

>>> bar = 'this is ' \
...       'one long string ' \
...           'that is split ' \
...     'across multiple lines'
>>> print bar
this is one long string that is split across multiple lines
via secnetix.de

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