Edit, sorry, shoulda read your whole commebt before replying

This issue is no worse that having multiple different variables that look the same and only in their obscure same-looking unicode symbols.

A linter can handle this. As can a decent font, or editor settings.

How?

    if(some condition)
        do something; {
        do something else;
    }
    do another thing;

See also https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/16530

Yes

I class that as a bug in the original C specification

That would be Python. I do not like it, which does not mean it is bad, it is a matter of taste

The alternative is you say "blocks are delimited by {}"

`if(foo) bar` should be invalid

`if(foo){bar}` is OK by me. Worik's tick of approval

(Neither is valid C I think)

Not necessarily. In practice, in C-as-actually-used people (should) set up linters and formatters, so that you can rely on indentation.

When programming, this means that you can behave as if both curly braces and indentation are significant, and you get an error when they are out-of-sync.

Like what? As you note, mixing tabs and spaces is now an error.

I've never understood the objection to semantic whitespace. Complaining about having to indent code correctly strikes me as being akin to complaining about having to pee in the toilet instead of the bathtub.

Bonus, if there's a good reason to change the linter format, you can do so. Rust handles this rather well I think.

Whitespace is a delimiter in (almost?) all languages humans use.

Whitespace determining which scope you’re in is one of the many problems of making whitespace significant.

Well, there's also the opposite: Goldman Sachs's Slang allows space as part of identifiers.

Many SQL implementations permit whitespace in identifiers, but then you need to use quoted identifiers.

> eg Python could do something similar, because they don't have any existing syntax where you just put two identifiers next to each other with only a space in between

The interaction with keywords would cause some issues. For example, right now, “if” is not a valid identifier (keyword), but “if_” and “_if” are. However, with this proposal “x y” could be a valid identifier, but “x if” would introduce ambiguity

> But C could not, because variable declaration is just two identifiers, one for the type and one for the variable name, next to each other with a space in between

This is one aspect of C syntax I have never liked. I always wish it had been Pascal-style `x:int;` instead of `int x;`

Sorry, I don't remember, and I can't seem to find it out online. I could ask my friends who still work there, if it's important. (For what it's worth, I never remember anyone complaining about mixing up a different number of spaces in their variable names. So either all number of spaces were treated the same, or perhaps multiple spaces in a row in an identifier were just banned (via linter or via language?).)

> The interaction with keywords would cause some issues. For example, right now, “if” is not a valid identifier (keyword), but “if_” and “_if” are. However, with this proposal “x y” could be a valid identifier, but “x if” would introduce ambiguity

Yes, you would need to sort out these details, if you wanted to add this 'feature' to Python.

> This is one aspect of C syntax I have never liked. I always wish it had been Pascal-style `x:int;` instead of `int x;`

I'm glad Rust made the same decision.

I do like using the 'space operator' to denote functions calls, at least for a language like Haskell or OCaml.

Yes, I agree that Python should just forbid tabs. As a second best, you can tell your linter (and/or formatter) to forbid tabs (and any weird unicode whitespace). That's basically the equivalent of compiling your C with -Wall.

Guido van Rossum has a famous retort to this comment. You can find it on YouTube.

Further, if you are so easy to knock a good programming language that has more than proven it's worth at this point, you can just as easily "cancel" ALL other programming languages for equally trivial reasons. If you dare, share your favourite languages, and the votes and replies will not be generous.

Tabs still have syntactical meaning and are still invisible

Python will never be a success, I predict, because of this

Trust me