In computer programming, a free-form language is a programming language in which the positioning of character (computing) on the page in program text is not significant. Program text does not need to be placed in specific columns as on old punched card systems, and frequently ends of lines are not significant. Whitespace is used to delimit Token_(parser), and does not have other significance.

Most free-form languages descend from languages are also free-form, although they do not descend from Algol. REXX is mostly free-form, though in some cases whitespace is a concatenation operator.

One recent language which has abandoned parts of the free-form idiom is Python programming language, which uses indentation with whitespace to delimit program blocks. Some critics regard this as a throwback, and find Python text harder to read and edit as it lacks the obvious punctuation of C or Pascal. Python aficionados, however, find that it improves readability: since indentation is commonly used in structured languages to make block structure visible, Python s use of whitespace ensures that the two are consistent.

=See also=