What is the purpose of the colon before a block in Python?

Question

What is the purpose of the colon before a block in Python?

Example:

if n == 0:
    print \"The end\"

Answer 1

Three reasons:

1. To increase readability. The colon helps the code flow into the following indented block.
2. To help text editors/IDEs, they can automatically indent the next line if the previous line ended with a colon.
3. To make parsing by python slightly easier.