Using the Python Interpreter as a Reference

[Travis Parks]

On Nov 28, 8:49 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:54 AM, DevPlayer <devpla... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > To me, I would think the interpreter finding the coder's intended
> > indent wouldn't be that hard. And just make the need for consistant
> > spaces or tabs irrevelent simply by reformatting the indent as
> > expected. Pretty much all my text editors can.
>
> The trouble with having a language declaration that "a tab is
> equivalent to X spaces" is that there's no consensus as to what X
> should be. Historically X has always been 8, and quite a few programs
> still assume this. I personally like 4. Some keep things narrow with
> 2. You can even go 1 - a strict substitution of \t with \x20. Once you
> declare it in your language, you immediately break everyone who uses
> anything different.
>
> ChrisA

Yeah. We must remember the Unix users, espcially those who don't know
how to hack Vim or bash. I've decided not to require a specific number
of spaces. I am still teetering on whether to allow tabs.