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Retrocomputing

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    This is not the sense of the offside rule. In that assembler, there is no syntactic difference between starting something in column 2 versus starting in column 3, right? In no sense is a thing starting in column 3 'inside' the entity on the previous line that started in column 2. Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 14:50
  • @another-dave That would only matter if the question was about multiple levels, wouldn't it? Except, making it so, it would exclude an aweful lot of languages by default. Including in part the mentioned Python. Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 15:22
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    Python's the exemplar of the offside rule: e.g., what is controlled by an if statement must (if on a separate line) be indented. Multiple levels of indent is what resolves the 'dangling else' issue. Contrariwise, in Python you can't indent where it's not syntactically acceptable. Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 15:29
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    "Assembler" is not a single programming language, it is a generic name for a very large class of languages, all of which had different conventions for such things. Commented Nov 27, 2022 at 13:45
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    @MichaelKay Well, I guess thare's an individual component. I've used at least a dozend different assemblers, on more than 20 different CPUs, ranging from micro to mainframe, and they all worked the same. It would be quite interesting to learn what you considere fundamental differences which are not tied to the instruction set. For example some not following the mentioned scheme? Commented Nov 28, 2022 at 1:13