On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 2:51 PM Alan Bawden <a...@csail.mit.edu> wrote: > > Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> writes: > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 9:56 AM Alan Bawden <a...@csail.mit.edu> wrote: > > > In my experience this is a very common way to assume that tabs will be > > > interpreted. Virtually every source-code file I have encountered since > > > the > > > mid 1970s (for any programming language or operating system) has assumed > > > either this convention or, slightly less often, its 4-column variant. > > > > > > It's surprising that you've never encountered it. > > > > I've seen the four-column variant, but never the two. Maybe I just > > move in different circles. In any case, I wouldn't say that "two space > > indents, collapsed to a tab after eight" is somehow a universal > > convention any more than four-space with or without collapsing. > > I think we're talking past each other somehow here. I described the common > 8-column interpretation, and the less common 4-column interpretation. I > did not mention, nor do I ever remember encountering in the wild, the > 2-column variation. (I _have_ seen the 10-column variation used -- it was > the standard on Multics.) > [chomp details]
I believe we are in agreement here - that it is common for a tab to be interpreted as equivalent to eight spaces, but also that this is definitely not the definition of the character. The convention that I'm saying I have never seen is this: On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 8:56 AM Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: > However, it is trumped by an older > convention whereby the indentation levels go as follows: > > 0: > 1: SPC SPC > 2: SPC SPC SPC SPC > 3: SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC > 4: TAB > 5: TAB SPC SPC > 6: TAB SPC SPC SPC SPC > 7: TAB SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC SPC > 8: TAB TAB Specifically that two-space indents and tab-collapsing are a *convention*. I have never seen this used anywhere, much less seen it commonly enough to call it a convention. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list