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Re: why indentation should be part of the syntax

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In article <mailman.7568.1393756930.18130.python-list@python.org>,
 Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> wrote:

> Haven't seen any mention of it on this list yet, but since it's such an
> obvious flaw in quite a number of programming languages, here's a good
> article on the recent security bug in iOS, which was due to accidentally
> duplicated code not actually being as indented as it looked:
> 
> https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html
> 
> Stefan

Hogwash.  What this looks like is two gotos in a row.  Anybody who 
reviewed this code would have thrown up a red flag when they saw two 
gotos in a row.  If anything, the "incorrect" indentation makes it even 
more obvious.  Any static code analyzer would have also caught this as 
an unreachable statement.

Paraphrasing this into Python, you get:

def bogus():
    if SSLHashSHA1.update(hashCtx, serverRandom) != 0:
        raise fail
    if SSLHashSHA1.update(hashCtx, signedParams) != 0:
        raise fail
        raise fail
    if SSLHashSHA1.final(hashCtx, hashOut) != 0:
        raise fail

which is syntactically valid (at least, I can import it), but clearly 
not what the author intended.  So how did Python's indentation rules 
save us?

On the other hand, the Python code was actually a little annoying to 
type in because emacs refused to auto-indent the second raise!  So maybe 
the real rule is to only write code using emacs :-)

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Thread

why indentation should be part of the syntax Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2014-03-02 11:41 +0100
  Re: why indentation should be part of the syntax Bernd Nawothnig <Bernd.Nawothnig@t-online.de> - 2014-03-02 13:07 +0100
  Re: why indentation should be part of the syntax Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-03-02 09:38 -0500
    Re: why indentation should be part of the syntax Nicholas Cole <nicholas.cole@gmail.com> - 2014-03-02 19:08 +0000
  Re: why indentation should be part of the syntax "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2014-03-03 21:43 +0000

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