def check_indent(cdline):
    """
    to check the indent of a given code line

    to get the number of starting blank chars,
    e.t. blankspaces and \t

    \t will be interpreted as 4 single blankspaces,
    e.t. '\t'='    '

    Args:
        cdline(str) : a single line of code from the source file

    Returns:
        int : the indent of the number of interpreted
             blankspaces
    """
    indent = 0
    for c in cdline:
        if c == '\t':
            indent += 4
        elif c == ' ':
            indent += 1
        if c != ' ' and c != '\t':
            break
    return indent