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[QUOTE="Steven D'Aprano, post: 4022211"]
They're not superfluous, they have a real, practical use.

Incorrect, they do have a use. Hint: source code isn't just read by 
parsers.

As opposed to how resistant source code is to buggy editors that make 
other changes to source code.

If your editor flips the order of characters, or turns the digit "4" into 
"7", or deletes braces, or inserts "#" characters at the start of lines, 
you would dump the editor in a second. But if the editor inserts or 
removes whitespace, we're supposed to continue using the editor and 
change the language?

It's not invisible. You can see it by noticing the space between the left 
margin and the start of non-whitespace text. Can you see the difference 
between these?

hello world

Of course you can, unless your News reader or mail client is buggy. If it 
is deleting whitespace at the start of lines, how can you trust it not to 
delete anything else?

Trailing spaces and tabs, on the other hand, *are* invisible. But they're 
also insignificant, and so don't matter.

(Except for one little tiny corner case, which I shall leave as an 
exercise for the advanced reader.)
[/QUOTE]

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