Re: code standards, tabs

[Mike Stover <ms...@apache.org>]

> -1, tabs are being dropped by most projects because they make interpretation 
> of the diffs harder, different editors interpret them differently, etc.

I don't see how it affects diffs.  And editors interpreting them differently is the whole 
point.

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Michael Stover
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Re: code standards, tabs

[Conor MacNeill <co...@cortexebusiness.com.au>]

Mike Stover wrote:
>>-1, tabs are being dropped by most projects because they make interpretation 
>>of the diffs harder, different editors interpret them differently, etc.
> 
> 
> I don't see how it affects diffs.  

When you get diffs with tabs, CVS will insert '-' and '+' characters. With 
tabs, the formatting goes to hell and it can be difficult to understand in 
which block changes occur. This is my experience. With spaces this is never 
a problem.

> And editors interpreting them differently is the whole 
> point.
> 

Not sure what you mean. The official Sun style guide distinguishes between 
tabs and indents. Tabs always take you to a tabstop at multiples of 8. I 
believe this is also the emacs standard. So when you set an indent size of 
4, the first indent is implemented with 4 spaces and the second level by 1 tab.

A lot of editors, OTOH, use tabs as the indent marker, so setting an indent 
size of 4, causes that editor to use 1 tab for the first indent and 2 tabs 
for the second indent.

Now think about how the code from each editor looks in the other editor

Case 1:
     if (tabs != indent) {
     looksBadlyIndented();
     }

Case 2:
        if (tabs == indent) {
                 looksBadToo();
        }

By using spaces I can be sure that code rendered in your editor is the same 
as code rendered in my editor - we see the same thing - and that is good.

So, editors interpreting tabs differently is a bad thing because people will 
tend to reformat the code to look right in their editor. :-)

In the end this is probably a religious issue bu the above is why I prefer 
spaces.

Conor


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