FYI, cross platform coding using MSDev on Windows and Emacs on Unix does seem to turn up more problems with tabs and spaces. It's a standard here to use a 2 space indent level for tabs (even if it's a tab, MSDev presents it as a two-space indent), not 4 or 8 space indents. Users new to the language have reacted amazingly negatively to errors caused by mix tab/space problems. So we've standardized on spaces and every developer has his or her editor set to generate two actual spaces when the tab key is pressed. Tab-free code. ;-) The tab/space issue is a subtle problem, and as Paul mentiond, we don't need errors caused by it to draw the fire of the anti-whitespace camp. Jason Asbahr Origin Systems, Inc. jasbahr@origin.ea.com -----Original Message----- From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paul@prescod.net] Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 1:50 PM To: python-dev@python.org Subject: Re: [Python-Dev] Python -t Skip Montanaro wrote:
Actually, I suspect that many people are in the same boat I'm in. I
rarely
need to move code I write off of Unix systems. I had to execute "python --help" yesterday to learn what -t means. Modules that I made public ages ago with no consideration of the tab devil have elicited nary a peep about indentation problems from anyone. (Of course, maybe nobody uses them and I'm simply deluding myself thinking they might be of interest to someone... ;-)
Still, if all tabs or all spaces is the way to go and we can be reasonably sure that most/all people will have an indentation-friendly editor at
Mixing tabs and spaces is not all that likely to cause problems, I admit. It's mostly in the hands of newbies starting from scratch (and anti-whitespace zealots) that it will be a problem. their
disposal, then perhaps after a period of time -t should be the default.
Well everyone in the world has an editor that either does tabs or spaces. Even "modern" (and I use the term VERY LOOSELY) versions of DOS EDIT.COM seem to preserve spaces. It didn't before. Can you imagine that there is still someone at Microsoft tweaking that code? -- Paul Prescod - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself "The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which it gave rise made modern science possible, but it was the algorithm that made possible the modern world." - from "Advent of the Algorithm" David Berlinski http://www.opengroup.com/mabooks/015/0151003386.shtml _______________________________________________ Python-Dev maillist - Python-Dev@python.org http://www.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
participants (6)
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Asbahr, Jason
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Barry A. Warsaw
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gvwilson@nevex.com
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Paul Prescod
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Tim Peters
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Vladimir Marangozov