[TUHS] tabs vs spaces - entab, detab

Will Senn will.senn at gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 07:42:38 AEST 2021



Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 4, 2021, at 3:29 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thursday,  4 March 2021 at 15:27:27 -0600, Will Senn wrote:
>>> On 3/4/21 3:24 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>>> FWIW, FreeBSD's style(9) man page
>>> (https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=style&apropos=0&sektion=9&manpath=FreeBSD+12.2-RELEASE+and+Ports&arch=default&format=html)
>>> includes:
>>> 
>>>    Indentation is an 8 character tab.  Second level indents are four
>>>    spaces.
>>> 
>>> I've always used 8 character tabs (though in my own code I don't stick
>>> to style(9)).  As others have commented, it's the Unix standard, and
>>> the confusion between tabs and spaces is bad enough without changing
>>> the relationship.
>> 
>> Wow, mixed tabs and spaces? On purpose? That's nuts :).
> 
> FWIW, I do this in my own code too.  Once you know about it, it's not
> an issue.  It helps to have an editor that highlights tab characters.
> 
> Greg
> --
> 
There’s a thought, highlight the pesky things. I usually hunt for them after they become an issue, but turning on a highlight is way better than my editor’s “show invisibles” function that puts a funky dash where tabs are... not invisible, just obfuscated.


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