New line creates whitespaces that conflict with PEP 8

Issue Report Checklist

• [ x ] Searched the issues page for similar reports
• [ x ] Read the relevant sections of the Spyder Troubleshooting Guide and followed its advice
• [ x ] Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• [ x ] Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

When creating a new line by return in an indented environment, spyder makes whitespaces to keep the indentation. However, when subsequently keeping the line empty by pressing return again, those whitespaces make a PEP 8 warning .

What steps reproduce the problem?

1. Open a new file
2. Create an indentation, e.g. using an if 3 .Add some code
3. Have a blank line by double tapping return and then some more code

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

A PEP8 warning occurs with whitespaces in blank line. My suggestion would be to catch if a line is intentionally blank and then remove the whitespaces needed for indentation. However, when the user decide to add code, the whitespaces have to be added manually to be on the right indentation which may be tedious.

[bcolsen]

you wouldn’t be able to add any whitespace at all

Yeah I thought that sounded too easy.

[CAM-Gerlach]

@bcolsen Okay, that makes sense. I always use <br> in Markdown personally, but its best to air on the side of caution when modifying what the user inputs by default.