David Champion writes:
> I also hate when people use spaces instead of tabs. ... They work
> fine together if you only tab where you want tabs ...
>
> int
> main(int argc, char *argv[])
> {
> printf("like this: %s\n",
> "spaces");
> exit(0);
> }
>
> That works wonderfully with any tab size.
No it doesn't.
For a start, now that I've quoted your code (with a less-than sign and a
space) only the code that was hard left against the edge has moved; the
other lines now have a tab which is giving an effective indent of 2
characters less than before, (and less than other indentation levels, if
there were any). You get a similar effect when diff-ing code puts
symbols in the first column to indicate removals and additions.
Also, I'm not that bothered how big indentation levels are, but I do
care that source code lines don't exceed 80 characters: I want them to
fit in a standard size terminal, to be readable in an e-mail message, to
be able to run diff on code and not find the lines are so long that it
takes a dedicated 'Where's Wally'[*0] watcher to spot where the actual
differences are.
And if tabs are variable, you can't know the length of a line, therefore
you can't break them before 80 characters.
Smylers
[*0] 'Where's Waldo', I believe, in some jurisdictions.
