Off-side Rule Languages Programming

This category involves one means by which different programming languages, within program code, control the scope of declarations, have blocks, how such start and end, and are: marked, formed, shown, expressed, indicated, denoted; their span.Alternatives:The main alternative is paired symbols or keywords. Most programming languages use this means to mark blocks.C-syntax family: whitespace is ignored. Blocks are marked between curly braces { and }. Advantage: code can be reformatted and neatly indented, even automatically, with no fear of change to block structure. Disadvantage: human readers see indentation easily and quickly and often miss much formal meaning communicated in braces, unless they are very careful.Pascal family: blocks shown by keywords, start with "begin", end with "end".LISP family: doesn't differentiate statements from expressions, parentheses are enough.POSIX shell family: blocks start after each control keyword and end with the keyword written backwards: "case" starts conditional statements, "esac" ends them.

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