Can I skip vimscript indentation inside conditional blocks

Question

I'm editing my ~/.vimrc this weekend, and I've run into a use case that seems to beg that I strip off indentation in an if-block.

Broken use-case in my ~/.vimrc (with if-block indentation):

if has('python3')
  python3 << EOF
# Insert python here
# more python
# and more python
  EOF
endif

Working use-case in my ~/.vimrc (without if-block indentation):

if has('python3')
python3 << EOF
# Insert python here...
# more python
# and more python
EOF
endif

As far as I can tell, the "Working use-case" (without indentation) is fine and vim seems to have no problems.

If I use the "Broken use-case" (with indentation in the vimscript if block), vim throws an error that it can't find the terminating EOF as well as the endif statement.

[INFO] Editing '/home/mpenning/.vimrc'.
Error detected while processing /home/mpenning/.vimrc:
line  815:
E990: Missing end marker 'EOF'
  File "<string>", line 4
    EOF
IndentationError: unexpected indent
line  816:
E171: Missing :endif

Is there any problem with stripping off indentation inside the if-block for my "Working use-case"?

Answer 1

In the recent vim (I have 8.2.4975) there is a trim parameter and following works for me:

if has('python3')
    py3 << trim PYEND
        def hello(world):
            print(world)

        hello("world")
    PYEND
endif

I don't know when it was added though.

UPD Looks like it is quite old https://github.com/vim/vim/blame/c51cf0329809c7ae946c59d6f56699227efc9d1b/runtime/doc/if_pyth.txt#L779

Answer 2

Is there any problem with stripping off indentation inside the if-block for my "Working use-case"?

Indentation is helpful when reading vimscript, but indentation is not required. There is no mention of required indentation for this use-case in the vimscript documentation.