Editing Whitespace (programming language) (section)

{{Short description|Esoteric programming language}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}}
{{For|syntactically significant whitespace in non-esoteric programming languages|Off-side rule}}
[[File:Whitespace in vim2.png|right|206px|thumb|Whitespace [[hello world program]] with syntax highlighting {{legend|#0000ab|tabs}} {{legend|#ab0000|spaces}}]] <!-- make SVG file -->

'''Whitespace''' is an [[esoteric programming language|esoteric]] [[programming language]] with [[syntax]] where ''only'' [[whitespace characters]] ([[Space character|space]], [[Tab character|tab]] and [[linefeed]]) have meaning {{endash}} contrasting typical languages that largely ignore whitespace characters.
<ref name="whitespace">{{cite web|url=http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/tutorial.php|title=Whitespace|website=Compsoc|access-date=2015-12-08|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150618184706/http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/tutorial.php|archive-date=18 June 2015}}</ref><ref name=parker>{{cite book|title=Humble Pi: a comedy of maths errors|publisher=Allen Lane|date=2019|first=Matt|last=Parker|author-link=Matt Parker|ISBN=978-0-241-36023-1|page=21}}</ref>

As a consequence of its syntax, Whitespace [[source code]] can be contained within the whitespace of code written in a language that ignores whitespace {{endash}} making the text a [[polyglot (computing)|polyglot]].<ref name=parker />

Whitespace is an [[imperative programming|imperative]], [[stack-oriented programming|stack-based]] language. 
The programmer can push arbitrary-width [[integer]] values onto a [[Stack (abstract data type)|stack]] and access a [[dynamic memory allocation|heap]] to store data.

An [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]], along with its [[Haskell]] source code, is provided by the Whitespace creators.