PoD wrote: > I think it is universally accepted that mixed tabs and spaces is indeed > **EVIL** > > I should have said any code using tabs exclusively. > Can you point at any significant body of publically visible Python code which uses tabs exclusively? All of the Python projects I've ever been involved with use spaces only as a convention (although as I pointed out in my previous post, some with more success than others).
The problem with conventions such as 'tabs only' or 'space only' is that they only work if everyone sticks to the conventions, and it helps if the same conventions are in place everywhere (otherwise people forget when they switch from one project to another). Also, in the open source universe you are quite likely to pull in bits of code from other projects, and you don't want to either have to reformat it or to switch your editor settings for some files. My experience of programming with either spaces or tabs has taught me that tabs are evil not for themselves, but simply because no matter how hard you try they always end up being mixed with spaces. Do you know of any open-source projects which actually try to enforce a 'tab only' convention for Python? I'd really like to see a similar scan over some 'tab only' code as I did over Plone to see whether they actually manage to remain 'pure'. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list