Indentation style

In computer programming, indentation style is a convention, a.k.a. style, governing the indentation of blocks of source code that is intended to result in code that conveys structure.

For a general discussion of indentation, see Indentation (typesetting).

Indentation involves using the same width of whitespace before each line of a group of code so that they appear to be related. As whitespace consists of both space and tab characters, a programmer can choose which to use – often entering them via the keyboard space key or tab key.

Indentation applies to every text-based programming language. This article primarily addresses free-form languages, with special attention to curly-bracket languages (that delimit blocks with curly brackets, a.k.a. curly braces, a.k.a. braces) and in particular C-family languages.

As the name implies, free-form language code need not follow an indentation style. Indentation is a secondary notation that is often intended to lower cognitive load for a programmer to understand the structure of the code. Indentation can clarify the separation between the code executed based on control flow.

Some free-from languages use keywords instead of braces – for example BEGIN and END.

Structured languages, such as Python and occam, use indentation to determine the structure instead of using braces or keywords; this is termed the off-side rule. In such languages, indentation is meaningful to the language processor (such as compiler or interpreter); not just the programmer.

A convention used for one language can be adapted for another language.

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