I think the compiler sees ^I and not spaces. The layout rule follows similar guidelines to good indenting practice expected in organizations that program in other languages.
If you use (g)vim to edit, you can :set expandtab to only use spaces for tabs. We do that where I work after some grumblings over whether a tab should represent 4 or 8 spaces. Now we use 4 spaces and no tabs. (:set list works in most vi flavors to show whether tab is spaces or ^I chars.) There are ways to implement it in (n)vi described in the vi FAQ published each month in comp.editors on Usenet and Google Groups. Also availble at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/editors/ Also, be careful to write "let ... in ..." in lowercase. Haskell is case sensitive. --- Ingo Wechsung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I'm new to Haskell and FP in general and I find it great. > > Having more than 10 years expirience with "whitespace does not matter" > languages, > the only thing that drives me crazy is the layout rule. > > As far as I understand it, I have 2 options: > > 1. Use braces and semicolons and ignore the layout rules. > > 2. Change the settings in all my editors so that the code looks like the > Haskell compiler sees it. > Currently, I expand tabs to 4 spaces only, so > > \tx=bar > > looks like > > ____foo = bar > > to me when the compiler sees > > ________foo = bar > > I would not want to change dozens of .exrc files, shell startup files with > and/or ultraedit settings on many different machines. > I also do not want to care whether there are spaces or tabs in front of my > source code lines. > > So I'm stuck with option 1, right? > Just to be sure, can I really, really forget about layout if I write fully > braced and semicolonoized code? > > Besides, is there any reason why the syntax is LET { decl1; decl2; ... } IN > expr when LET and IN are sufficient enough to enclose the declarations? > > Greetings, > Ingo > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ===== Christopher Milton [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
