Sybex Practice Tests 17 - Chapter 1 - Page 21

[Matthew Phoenix]

Hi everyone,
I think there is a formatting error on question 66 on Kindle.

Code appears in the following way and the answer says that there are both incidental and essential whitespace. I can see only essential whitespace.
Am I misunderstood concept of incidental whitespace or am I right?

                                                       var block = """
                                      green
                                        yellow
                                      """;

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch

I don't know whether there is a formatting error or not, but you can find the definition of text blocks in the JLS (=Java® Language Specification).

Let's try the code on JShell:-

Campbell's JShell wrote:jshell>                                                       var block = """
  ...>                                      green
  ...>                                        yellow
  ...>                                      """;
block ==> "green\n  yellow\n"

jshell> block
block ==> "green\n  yellow\n"

jshell> System.out.print(block);
green
 yellow

Notice the incidental whitespace, which is that to the left of the """ delimiters, has been removed. Only the rightmost two spaces in line 3 are essential whitespace, and those remain. Note that the line end after line 3 is preserved.

[Matthew Phoenix]

As the book says the incidental whitespace is the space on the left of the line "draw" by the last leftmost character. In both the example (the one that I posted and the one from Jshell). The immaginary  vertical line to draw is on the same level of the "g" of green and """. I cannot see other whitespace on the left, that's why I don't think there is an incidental whitespace.
If I miss or misunderstand something from your answer please let me know.

Thanks in advance

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

In the print book it says

var block = """
     green
        yellow
    """;

Unfortunately, we have no control of the formatting on Kindle.

[Matthew Phoenix]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:In the print book it says

var block = """
     green
        yellow
    """;

Unfortunately, we have no control of the formatting on Kindle.

I think I misunderstood the essential whitespace explanation in the book. In this example "the line draw by the last leftmost character" is the one immediately before then g of green? Am I right ?
Because to calculate the incidental whitespace usually I took into account a line draw by the triple """.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Matthew Phoenix wrote:I think I misunderstood the essential whitespace explanation in the book. In this example "the line draw by the last leftmost character" is the one immediately before then g of green? Am I right ?

Yes! You are correct