Tabs -vs- Spaces: Tabs should have won.

Thorsten Kampe thorsten at thorstenkampe.de
Sun Jul 17 11:03:57 EDT 2011


* Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn (Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:35:15 +0200)
> Thorsten Kampe wrote:
> > * Andrew Berg (Sun, 17 Jul 2011 05:02:22 -0500)
> >> I still don't understand. Whitespace to the left of an assignment
> >> to signify an indent and whitespace around operators to align
> >> values (in a multi-line assignment) are not the same.
> > 
> > When I'm (consistently, of course) indenting code, I'm aligning it. When
> > I'm aligning code, I do this by indenting it, see for instance...
> > 
> > firstvariable = 11
> > variable      = 111
> > 
> > firstvariable = 22
> > variable =      222
> > 
> > The second "=" and the "222" is indented.
> 
> You might want to check your English dictionary.  Indenting is commonly 
> understood in typography as "To begin (a line or lines) at a greater or less 
> distance from the margin"¹.  In particular, in computer programming it 
> usually means that there is, at most, whitespace on the left of the text.²  
> In that sense, the above is _not_ indentation (or indenting), as neither 
> "variable" nor "variable =" consist only of whitespace.  It is only 
> aligning.³

*doublesigh* that is actually the point I was trying to make. From a 
programmer's point of view the distinction is artificial because he does 
essentially the same: press the tab key or the indent button to move the 
stuff right from the cursor to the right so it gets aligned with the 
stuff above.

Thorsten



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