Non-Indented python

Steve Holden sholden at holdenweb.com
Thu Nov 29 15:15:09 EST 2001


"Huaiyu Zhu" <huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com> wrote...
[Jeff Shannon and Huaiyu go back and forth ...]
>
> So the ideal world is all spaces, no tabs.  It is then not a big leap to
> allow tab as a shorthand to replace the number of spaces used as indent.
>
Just because I can hear Peter banging his head on the desk from here, let me
agree wholeheartedly with your first sentence, and point out that in your
second sentence you fall again into the error of assuming that a tab will
always represent a fixed number of spaces.

I suspect this may be a language problem, and that when you say "replace the
number of spaces used as indent", you might really mean "replace the number
of spaces that will take you to a particular indent level". Perhaps this is
a fine distinction, and one which need not be made for tabs which occur at
the start of a line. But, mix spaces in, or other characters, and a tab
should NOT be treated as equal to any fixed number of spaces.

Outlook Express does that (hit TAB and it always puts 4 spaces in, don't ask
me why)    [see?]    [that was a second TAB] and it's horrible.

but-since-outlook-express-throws-tabs-away-anyway-what-
        else-should-we-expect-ly y'rs  - steve
--
http://www.holdenweb.com/








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