On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Ian Tickle <ianj...@gmail.com> wrote: > reassuring air of finality! Maybe a Python expert will answer this > but I've often wondered, what happens if as some editors do > (particularly if as I do you have to use different editors at > different times depending on where you are working, such as on Windows > working remotely from home or Linux at work), you could have a mixture > of space and tab characters in the file?
Yes, this can happen. In practice, one learns very quickly to configure the text editors to prevent this kind of mix-up, i.e. by always inserting spaces instead of tab characters. In vim, for instance, you can do this: set expandtab set tabstop=2 For CCTBX, the rule is to use two spaces as the indentation (tabs strictly forbidden), and despite having multiple active contributors, this is almost never a problem. (The rule for most other Python modules appears to be four spaces, which I personally find too wide.) It becomes second nature after a while, just like adding a semicolon at the end of each statement in C/C++/Java/etc. I agree that it seems annoying and confusing at first, but if you've ever tried to edit someone else's C or Perl code where the indentation was totally inconsistent, you'll quickly learn to appreciate Python's style. > So does Python automatically expand the tabs to the > equivalent number of spaces or (as in data input) are they treated as > single characters? And anyway how does Python know what tab stops my > editors are set to and indeed how exactly my editors treat tabs? Answers are "no" and "it doesn't", at least I don't think so. The safest thing (especially if you need to copy and paste code from any other module) is to never use literal tabs. -Nat
