Then use better whitespace rules. Not to mention the helper isn't capturing any closure here so it's not particularly useful inline, and even when they are you

Then use better whitespace rules. Not to mention the helper isn't capturing any closure here so it's not particularly useful inline, and even when they are you can refactor variable capture to new functions. Nested definitions in python are pretty rare, and oft unnecessary if __name__ == '__main__': def this_is_a_function(*args, **kwargs): def this_is_a_helper_function( arg1, arg2='this line is now indented 12 chars!' ): this_long_variable = ( "Don't put an expression here unless you " "want to use useless intermediate variabls." ) return this_long variable if var else 'really short here' return 1