Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code ('semantic' vs. arbitrary indentation)

2006-05-18 Thread achates
Edward Elliott wrote: What really should happen is that every time an editor reads in source code, the code is reformatted for display according to the user's settings. The editor becomes a parser, breaking the code down into tokens and emitting it in a personally preferred format. I

Re: Tabs are *MISUNDERSTOOD*, *EVIL* AND *STUPID*, end of discussion. (Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code)

2006-05-18 Thread achates
Duncan Booth wrote: No. That is precisely the problem: there is code in the wild which contains mixed space and tab indentation... followed by some good examples of mixed tab and space indentation I wouldn't have a problem with tabs if Python rejected mixed indentation by default, because

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Iain King wrote: python -tt Indeed. I reckon the consensus here (to the extent that there is any!) is that it would be better if this was Python's default behaviour. The argument (not advanced by Iain but by others in this thread) that: novices will mix tabs and spaces = we should all use

Re: Tabs are *EVIL*, end of discussion. (Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Andy Sy wrote: Don't be evil - always configure your editor to convert tabs to true spaces. Yet another space-indenter demonstrates that problem actually lies with people who think that tab == some spaces. And I, for the life of me, have never remembered getting any source code to display

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Hitting the spacebar like a madman? If you have a sensible editor then at the start of a line you press tab once True! but normally if I'm editing someone else's code then I'm only making small changes and so can't be bothered to temporarily cripple my editor. If I'm merging my code with someone

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Jorge Godoy wrote Emacs guess what's used in the file and allows me to use tabs all the time, doing the correct thing... That sounds like useful behaviour. Maybe this is an area where modern editors might be able to save us from ourselves. I'll admit I'm suspicious of relying on editor

Re: Tabs are *MISUNDERSTOOD*, *EVIL* AND *STUPID*, end of discussion. (Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Andy Sy I guess this *REALLY* is how a misguided tab user exercises his 'logic': Syntax replication (e.g. so-called 'argument construction') is enough, semantics don't matter. That's quite amusing.. you've unwittingly stumbled on a pretty concise statement of Hilbert's first postulate of formal

Re: Tabs are EVIL *and* STUPID, end of discussion. (Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Andy Sy: Code with anything other than 8-space tabs will *NEVER* display properly using everyday unix utilities such as less and cat. less -xtabstop does what you want. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Tabs are EVIL *and* STUPID, end of discussion. (Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Dave Hansen wrote: That will work. As long as the creator of file used four-space TABs, anyway... That sentence has no meaning. There is no such thing as a four-space tab. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code ('semantic' vs. arbitrary indentation)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Andy Sy wrote: def sqlcall(): cursor.execute('select id, item, amount, field4, field5, field6'+ 'from table1 where amount100') Lines two and three (a continuation line) are both at a syntactic indentation level of 1. Therefore they should both start with a

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code ('semantic' vs. arbitrary indentation)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Dave Hansen wrote: However, to twist an observation I've read about C++, while it's clearly possible to use TABs in a sensible manner like this, it seems that no one does. I think it's evident from this thread that quite a few people do that, judging by the fact that my previous post explaining

Re: python vs perl lines of code

2006-05-17 Thread achates
It probably says something about your coding style, particularly in perl. I've found (anecdotally of course) that while perl is potentially the more economical language, writing *legible* perl takes a lot more space. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code ('semantic' vs. arbitrary indentation)

2006-05-17 Thread achates
Carl J. Van Arsdall wrote: The converse can also be said, it's difficult to make sure everyone uses spaces and not tabs. I think we've just about beat this discussion to death... nice work everyone! Yeah - we've got to the repeating ourselves stage. But that's the problem with this issue:

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-16 Thread achates
Duncan Booth wrote: but I prefer editors which keep things simple. The tab key is particularly prone to excessively complicated actions, for example the editor I use has the following (not simple at all, and in fact not even an accurate description of what it does) binding for the tab key:

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-16 Thread achates
Kaz Kylheku wrote: If you want to do nice typesetting of code, you have to add markup which has to be stripped away if you actually want to run the code. Typesetting code is not a helpful activity outside of the publishing industry. You might like the results of your typsetting; I happen not

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-16 Thread achates
Duncan Booth wrote: Because it doesn't mean 'one level of indentation', it means 'move to next tabstop' and a tabstop isn't necessarily the same as a level of indentation. 'move to next tabstop' is how your editor interprets a tab character. 'one level of indentation' is how the language parser

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-16 Thread achates
Duncan Booth wrote: However the important thing is that a tab does not map to a single indentation level in Python: it can map to any number of indents, and unless I know the convention you are using to display the tabs I cannot know how many indents are equivalent to a tabstop. Sorry but this

Re: Tabs versus Spaces in Source Code

2006-05-15 Thread achates
Harry George wrote: The reason is simple: People get confused, and accidentally get the wrong tab indents when they move among editors or among settings on the same editor. People certainly do get confused. I'm always amazed that so many people, even amongst those who manage to make a living