IndentationError unindent does not match any outer indentation level

Question

When I compile the Python code below  I get      IndentationError  unindent does not match any outer indentation level     import sys  def Factorial n     Return factorial     result   1     for i in range  1 n           result   result   i     print  factorial is   result     return result   Why

User · Answer

For SPYDER users  I m using spyder 3 3 2 with python 3 7 1 and I solved this  setting indentation to use tabs  with the following steps  click on    Tools  Preferences  Editor  Advanced settings  Indentation characters -  Tabs    Then I reset the  unidented  line using tab key   For some reason  without this setting  I got the ghost IndentationError sometimes

User · Answer

On Atom  go to   Packages  gt  Whitespace  gt  Convert Spaces to Tabs   Then check again your file indentation   python -m tabnanny yourFile py   or   gt python  gt  gt  gt  help  yourFile py

User · Answer

If you are using Vim  hit escape and then type   gg G  This auto indents everything and will clear up any spaces you have thrown in

User · Answer

Other posters are probably correct   there might be spaces mixed in with your tabs  Try doing a search  amp  replace to replace all tabs with a few spaces   Try this   import sys  def Factorial n     return factorial     result   1     for i in range  1 n           result   result   i     print  factorial is   result     return result  print Factorial 10

User · Answer

In intellij with python plugin  Ctrl   Shift   Alt to reformat the document fixed the indent tab spaces problem

User · Answer

To easily check for problems with tabs spaces you can actually do this   python -m tabnanny yourfile py   or you can just set up your editor correctly of course  -

User · Answer

On Atom  go to   Packages  gt  Whitespace  gt  Convert Spaces to Tabs   Then check again your file indentation   python -m tabnanny yourFile py   or   gt python  gt  gt  gt  help  yourFile py

User · Answer

Just a addition  I had a similar problem with the both indentations in Notepad      Unexcepted indentation Outer Indentation Level  Go to ----  Search tab ----  tap on replace ----  hit the radio button Extended below ---  Now replace  t with four spaces  Go to ----  Search tab ----  tap on replace ----  hit the radio button Extended below ---  Now replace  n with nothing

User · Answer

I got this error even though I didn t have any tabs in my code  and the reason was there was a superfluous closing parenthesis somewhere in my code  I should have figured this out earlier because it was messing up spaces before and after some equal signs    If you find anything off even after running Reformat code in your IDE  or manually running autopep8   make sure all your parentheses match  starting backwards from the weird spaces before after the first equals sign

User · Answer

I am using Sublime Text 3 with a Flask project  I fixed the error using View  gt  Indentation  gt  Tab Width  4 after unselected Indent Using Spaces

User · Answer

If you use notepad    do a  replace  with extended search mode to find  t and replace with four spaces

User · Answer

If you use Python s IDLE editor you can do as it suggests in one of similar error messages   1  select all  e g  Ctrl   A  2  Go to Format -  Untabify Region  3  Double check your indenting is still correct  save and rerun your program   I m using Python 2 5 4

User · Answer

For SPYDER users  I m using spyder 3 3 2 with python 3 7 1 and I solved this  setting indentation to use tabs  with the following steps  click on    Tools  Preferences  Editor  Advanced settings  Indentation characters -  Tabs    Then I reset the  unidented  line using tab key   For some reason  without this setting  I got the ghost IndentationError sometimes

User · Answer

I had a function defined  but it did not had any content apart from its function comments     def foo bar         Some awesome temporary comment        But there is actually nothing in the function        D Oh    It yelled      File  foobar py   line 69                                    IndentationError  expected an indented block    note that the line the   mark points to is empty   --  Multiple solutions   1  Just comment out the function  2  Add function comment  def foo bar          Some awesome comment  This comment could be just one space      3  Add line that does nothing  def foo bar       0   In any case  make sure to make it obvious why it is an empty function - for yourself  or for your peers that will use your code

User · Answer

It could be because the function above it is not indented the same way  i e   class a      def blah        print  Hello world       def blah1        print  Hello world

User · Answer

To easily check for problems with tabs spaces you can actually do this   python -m tabnanny yourfile py   or you can just set up your editor correctly of course  -

User · Answer

If you are using Sublime text for python development you can avoid the error by using the package Anaconda After installing Anaconda         open your file in sublime   right click on the open spaces   choose anaconda   click on autoformat   DONE Or Press CTRL ALT R

User · Answer

If you are using Sublime text for python development you can avoid the error by using the package Anaconda After installing Anaconda         open your file in sublime   right click on the open spaces   choose anaconda   click on autoformat   DONE Or Press CTRL ALT R

User · Answer

Using Visual studio code If you are using vs code than  it will convert all mix Indentation to either space or tabs using this simple steps below   press Ctrl   Shift   p  type indent using spaces  Press Enter

User · Answer

The line  result   result   i should be indented  it is the body of the for-loop    Or - you have mixed space and tab characters

User · Answer

Firstly  just to remind you there is a logical error you better keep result 1 or else your output will be result 0 even after the loop runs   Secondly you can write it like this   import sys  def Factorial n     Return factorial   result   0   for i in range  1 n        result   result   i    print  factorial is   result   return result   Leaving a line will tell the python shell that the FOR statements have ended  If you have experience using the python shell then you can understand why we have to leave a line

User · Answer

To easily check for problems with tabs spaces you can actually do this   python -m tabnanny yourfile py   or you can just set up your editor correctly of course  -

User · Answer

Whenever I ve encountered this error  it s because I ve somehow mixed up tabs and spaces in my editor

User · Answer

For what its worth  my docstring was indented too much and this also throws the same error  class junk           docstring is indented too much         def fun    return      IndentationError  unindent does not match any outer indentation level

User · Answer

in my case  the problem was the configuration of pydev on Eclipse

User · Answer

for Atom Users  Packages - gt whitspace - gt  remove trailing whitespaces  this worked for me

User · Answer

Since I realize there s no answer specific to spyder I ll add one    Basically  carefully look at your if statement and make sure all if  elif and else have the same spacing that is they re in the same line at the start like so   def your choice answer       if answer gt 5          print  You re overaged       elif answer lt  5 and answer gt 1               print  Welcome to the toddler s club        else              print  No worries mate

User · Answer

Are you sure you are not mixing tabs and spaces in your indentation white space   That will cause that error    Note  it is recommended that you don t use tabs in Python code  See the style guide  You should configure Notepad   to insert spaces for tabs

User · Answer

I was using Jupyter notebook and tried almost all of the above solutions  adapting to my scenario  to no use  I then went line by line  deleted all spaces for each line and replaced with tab  That solved the issue

User · Answer

If you are using Vim  hit escape and then type   gg G  This auto indents everything and will clear up any spaces you have thrown in

User · Answer

in my case  the problem was the configuration of pydev on Eclipse

User · Answer

I had the same issue yesterday  it was indentation error  was using sublime text editor  took my hours trying to fix it and at the end I ended up copying the code into VI text editor and it just worked fine  ps python is too whitespace sensitive  make sure not to mix space and tab

User · Answer

For example   1  def convert distance miles   2    km   miles   1 6 3    return km   In this code same situation occurred for me  Just delete the previous indent spaces of line 2 and 3  and then either use tab or space  Never use both  Give proper indentation while writing code in python  For Spyder  goto Source   Fix Indentation  Same goes to VC Code and sublime text or any other editor  Fix the indentation

User · Answer

Whenever I ve encountered this error  it s because I ve somehow mixed up tabs and spaces in my editor

User · Answer

Other posters are probably correct   there might be spaces mixed in with your tabs  Try doing a search  amp  replace to replace all tabs with a few spaces   Try this   import sys  def Factorial n     return factorial     result   1     for i in range  1 n           result   result   i     print  factorial is   result     return result  print Factorial 10

User · Answer

If you use notepad    do a  replace  with extended search mode to find  t and replace with four spaces

User · Answer

For Spyder users goto Source   Fix Indentation to fix the issue immediately

User · Answer

In intellij with python plugin  Ctrl   Shift   Alt to reformat the document fixed the indent tab spaces problem

User · Answer

The line  result   result   i should be indented  it is the body of the for-loop    Or - you have mixed space and tab characters

User · Answer

This is because there is a mix-up of both tabs and spaces  You can either remove all the spaces and replace them with tabs   Or  Try writing this      usr bin python -tt   at the beginning of the code  This line resolves any differences between tabs and spaces

User · Answer

Looks to be an indentation problem  You don t have to match curly brackets in Python but you do have to match indentation levels   The best way to prevent space tab problems is to display invisible characters within your text  editor  This will give you a quick way to prevent and or resolve indentation-related errors   Also  injecting copy-pasted code is a common source for this type of problem

User · Answer

It could be because the function above it is not indented the same way  i e   class a      def blah        print  Hello world       def blah1        print  Hello world

User · Answer

Whenever I ve encountered this error  it s because I ve somehow mixed up tabs and spaces in my editor

User · Answer

Other posters are probably correct   there might be spaces mixed in with your tabs  Try doing a search  amp  replace to replace all tabs with a few spaces   Try this   import sys  def Factorial n     return factorial     result   1     for i in range  1 n           result   result   i     print  factorial is   result     return result  print Factorial 10

User · Answer

To easily check for problems with tabs spaces you can actually do this   python -m tabnanny yourfile py   or you can just set up your editor correctly of course  -

User · Answer

IMPORTANT  Spaces are the preferred method - see PEP008 Indentation and Tabs or Spaces    Thanks to  Siha for this    For Sublime Text users   Set Sublime Text to use tabs for indentation  View --  Indentation --  Convert Indentation to Tabs  Uncheck the Indent Using Spaces option as well in the same sub-menu above  This will immediately resolve this issue

User · Answer

The line  result   result   i should be indented  it is the body of the for-loop    Or - you have mixed space and tab characters

User · Answer

I was using Jupyter notebook and tried almost all of the above solutions  adapting to my scenario  to no use  I then went line by line  deleted all spaces for each line and replaced with tab  That solved the issue

User · Answer

Are you sure you are not mixing tabs and spaces in your indentation white space   That will cause that error    Note  it is recommended that you don t use tabs in Python code  See the style guide  You should configure Notepad   to insert spaces for tabs

User · Answer

I had a function defined  but it did not had any content apart from its function comments     def foo bar         Some awesome temporary comment        But there is actually nothing in the function        D Oh    It yelled      File  foobar py   line 69                                    IndentationError  expected an indented block    note that the line the   mark points to is empty   --  Multiple solutions   1  Just comment out the function  2  Add function comment  def foo bar          Some awesome comment  This comment could be just one space      3  Add line that does nothing  def foo bar       0   In any case  make sure to make it obvious why it is an empty function - for yourself  or for your peers that will use your code

User · Answer

If you use Komodo editor you can do as it suggests in one of similar error messages   1  select all  e g  Ctrl   A  2  Go to Code -  Untabify Region  3  Double check your indenting is still correct  save and rerun your program   I m using Python 3 4 2

User · Answer

Looks to be an indentation problem  You don t have to match curly brackets in Python but you do have to match indentation levels   The best way to prevent space tab problems is to display invisible characters within your text  editor  This will give you a quick way to prevent and or resolve indentation-related errors   Also  injecting copy-pasted code is a common source for this type of problem

User · Answer

Whenever I ve encountered this error  it s because I ve somehow mixed up tabs and spaces in my editor

User · Answer

If you use Komodo editor you can do as it suggests in one of similar error messages   1  select all  e g  Ctrl   A  2  Go to Code -  Untabify Region  3  Double check your indenting is still correct  save and rerun your program   I m using Python 3 4 2

User · Answer

Other posters are probably correct   there might be spaces mixed in with your tabs  Try doing a search  amp  replace to replace all tabs with a few spaces   Try this   import sys  def Factorial n     return factorial     result   1     for i in range  1 n           result   result   i     print  factorial is   result     return result  print Factorial 10

User · Answer

Just a addition  I had a similar problem with the both indentations in Notepad      Unexcepted indentation Outer Indentation Level  Go to ----  Search tab ----  tap on replace ----  hit the radio button Extended below ---  Now replace  t with four spaces  Go to ----  Search tab ----  tap on replace ----  hit the radio button Extended below ---  Now replace  n with nothing

User · Answer

The line  result   result   i should be indented  it is the body of the for-loop    Or - you have mixed space and tab characters

User · Answer

Are you sure you are not mixing tabs and spaces in your indentation white space   That will cause that error    Note  it is recommended that you don t use tabs in Python code  See the style guide  You should configure Notepad   to insert spaces for tabs

User · Answer

For what its worth  my docstring was indented too much and this also throws the same error  class junk           docstring is indented too much         def fun    return      IndentationError  unindent does not match any outer indentation level

User · Answer

I got this error even though I didn t have any tabs in my code  and the reason was there was a superfluous closing parenthesis somewhere in my code  I should have figured this out earlier because it was messing up spaces before and after some equal signs    If you find anything off even after running Reformat code in your IDE  or manually running autopep8   make sure all your parentheses match  starting backwards from the weird spaces before after the first equals sign

User · Answer

I had the same issue yesterday  it was indentation error  was using sublime text editor  took my hours trying to fix it and at the end I ended up copying the code into VI text editor and it just worked fine  ps python is too whitespace sensitive  make sure not to mix space and tab

User · Answer

IMPORTANT  Spaces are the preferred method - see PEP008 Indentation and Tabs or Spaces    Thanks to  Siha for this    For Sublime Text users   Set Sublime Text to use tabs for indentation  View --  Indentation --  Convert Indentation to Tabs  Uncheck the Indent Using Spaces option as well in the same sub-menu above  This will immediately resolve this issue

User · Answer

For example   1  def convert distance miles   2    km   miles   1 6 3    return km   In this code same situation occurred for me  Just delete the previous indent spaces of line 2 and 3  and then either use tab or space  Never use both  Give proper indentation while writing code in python  For Spyder  goto Source   Fix Indentation  Same goes to VC Code and sublime text or any other editor  Fix the indentation

User · Answer

I am using Sublime Text 3 with a Flask project  I fixed the error using View  gt  Indentation  gt  Tab Width  4 after unselected Indent Using Spaces

User · Answer

This is because there is a mix-up of both tabs and spaces  You can either remove all the spaces and replace them with tabs   Or  Try writing this      usr bin python -tt   at the beginning of the code  This line resolves any differences between tabs and spaces

User · Answer

If you use Python s IDLE editor you can do as it suggests in one of similar error messages   1  select all  e g  Ctrl   A  2  Go to Format -  Untabify Region  3  Double check your indenting is still correct  save and rerun your program   I m using Python 2 5 4

User · Answer

for Atom Users  Packages - gt whitspace - gt  remove trailing whitespaces  this worked for me

User · Answer

Firstly  just to remind you there is a logical error you better keep result 1 or else your output will be result 0 even after the loop runs   Secondly you can write it like this   import sys  def Factorial n     Return factorial   result   0   for i in range  1 n        result   result   i    print  factorial is   result   return result   Leaving a line will tell the python shell that the FOR statements have ended  If you have experience using the python shell then you can understand why we have to leave a line

User · Answer

Are you sure you are not mixing tabs and spaces in your indentation white space   That will cause that error    Note  it is recommended that you don t use tabs in Python code  See the style guide  You should configure Notepad   to insert spaces for tabs

User · Answer

For Spyder users goto Source   Fix Indentation to fix the issue immediately

User · Answer

This happens mainly because of editor  Try changing tabs to spaces 4  the best python friendly IDE or Editors are pycharm  sublime  vim for linux  even i too had encountered the same issue   later i found that there is a encoding issue  i suggest u too change ur editor

User · Answer

Using Visual studio code If you are using vs code than  it will convert all mix Indentation to either space or tabs using this simple steps below   press Ctrl   Shift   p  type indent using spaces  Press Enter

User · Answer

This happens mainly because of editor  Try changing tabs to spaces 4  the best python friendly IDE or Editors are pycharm  sublime  vim for linux  even i too had encountered the same issue   later i found that there is a encoding issue  i suggest u too change ur editor

User · Answer

Since I realize there s no answer specific to spyder I ll add one    Basically  carefully look at your if statement and make sure all if  elif and else have the same spacing that is they re in the same line at the start like so   def your choice answer       if answer gt 5          print  You re overaged       elif answer lt  5 and answer gt 1               print  Welcome to the toddler s club        else              print  No worries mate

[python] IndentationError: unindent does not match any outer indentation level

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