> Am Mittwoch, den 08.02.2006, 15:43 -0500 schrieb Miguel: >> For software development projects it is important to maintain a >> consistent >> coding style. > > Short question: What made the decision to use spaces instead of tabs for > indentation? Tabs allow the user to choose how many spaces are used for > a tab-step. Using only spaces encreases the file-size and forces the > user to use the chosen tab-step. >By default, tab stops are at 8 chars.
Many text editors will allow you to change the tab stops, but that only helps you within the context of the text editor. It does not help when you are outside the text editor. When you go to print code, the formatter will set tabs to 8 chars. The formatter probably has another option to change the tabs, but every formatter is different and has different options. You will not remember to set the option until you have printed some pages. Some people will leave tab stops at 8. So, when something gets indented 4 levels they will put in a tab. Or, perhaps to take big steps when indenting parameters to a function. This causes even more confusion. I like to grep for things from the command line. Look through all of the source code for instances of the method foo(). find src -name \*.java | xargs grep foo When the leading tabs get expanded to 8 chars then you cannot read anything because things get wrapped to the next line. Best thing is to simply say 'no tabs' in the files. That does not mean that you should not use the Tab key within the context of the text editor. Most text editors can be configured to allow you to use the tab key, but fill with spaces. Expanded source file size because of space expansion is not an issue. Miguel ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Jmol-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-developers
