code: def skip_whitespace(self):
          
  
          skipped = 0
          while True:
              c = self._get_char()
              if c != ' ' and c != '\t':
                  if (c != '\n') or not self.multiline:
                      self._unget_char(c)
                      return skipped
              skipped += 1
docs: Consume input until a non-whitespace character is encountered.
  
          The non-whitespace character is then ungotten, and the number of
          whitespace characters consumed is returned.
  
          If the tokenizer is in multiline mode, then newlines are whitespace.
  
          @rtype: int