Keep tabs as tabs or tabs as spaces
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You know what I mean - you can have it so that a tab is a tab, and backspace removes it - or you can have it as usually 4 spaces so one tab takes four backspace hits to remove it. I like the first way and despise the second (it offends my need for symmetry), but seem to be alone in this in my current place of work. Or worse yet - "does it matter?" Please reassure me I'm in the right really....
Regards, Rob Philpott.
REAL tabs are the one and only thing to use, spaces must appear one at a time. And, with a tool you can change tabs in spaces, but not the other way around. :cool:
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You know what I mean - you can have it so that a tab is a tab, and backspace removes it - or you can have it as usually 4 spaces so one tab takes four backspace hits to remove it. I like the first way and despise the second (it offends my need for symmetry), but seem to be alone in this in my current place of work. Or worse yet - "does it matter?" Please reassure me I'm in the right really....
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Spaces always. Tabs are 8 chars, or 4 chars, or 3 chars, or something else depending on the phase of the moon. They are *meant* to be configurable, and your indentation is probably not. Just because some printers in the 1980s had fixed tab width doesn't mean you can rely on it. And if you are working with a variety of people and/or tools, sooner or later you'll get your code back with the wrong tab size and give yourself pain. Use spaces and then everyone knows where you're indented.
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I always use tabs with a tab width of 4. What I would be interested in knowing is, why is there even an option to use spaces instead of the tab character? Doesn't tab deserve the right to exist by itself? Who introduced this idea of converting all your tabs into spaces and why?
Because tabs predate high-level programming languages. On a typewriter, you can set the tabs to get text to line up, BUT the big thing about them is that a tab could be one level on one page, another level when you go to type in a different column of names, or whatever. And when you go to type the next document, you could set different tab sizes. Go to a different typewriter - you are certainly not continuing the same document, so you will have different tab settings again. Look at tabs in a word processor - that's the sort of thing they are for. In a programming language, you want your levels of code to be indented by a certain amount, which you do not want to change half way down the file, or when you go to a different PC. And tabs are just the wrong tool for that. Spaces (in a monospaced font, and that's the only type to use when programming) have the same width as any other character. Always. And that's what you want when indenting. The tab key should indent by the amount you want, and the backspace (or typing a } ) should outdent you by the same amount. But that's interpreted by the editor, not by whatever is converting your source code into a displayable format -- which might be an editor, or it might be someone else's editor, or maybe a printer if you're being retro. So the editor should do what the keys you press tell it to do, and record the result unambiguously in your source code file. And "unambiguously" means with spaces. Recording a tab character in the source code means that what you type will be reinterpreted by the editor that is loading it, and the way it is reinterpreted may not be what you intended.
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You know what I mean - you can have it so that a tab is a tab, and backspace removes it - or you can have it as usually 4 spaces so one tab takes four backspace hits to remove it. I like the first way and despise the second (it offends my need for symmetry), but seem to be alone in this in my current place of work. Or worse yet - "does it matter?" Please reassure me I'm in the right really....
Regards, Rob Philpott.
It matters big time... Anyone using Source Control needs to consider the implications, in particular when working on multi-developer projects. Source Control (most of them) only store the delta (changes) of the code. Now this setting is a personal preference, so each IDE can set not only how many spaces = 1 tab, but also if it should convert one to the other. (how it handles quoted strings is another story) As devs checkout code, don't like the formatting, change it, and check it back in. You end up with source deltas that contain nothing but tab to space and space to tab conversions - and possibly 1 or 2 real code changes. (and it all has to be stored somewhere) This becomes more problematical when it comes to merging code branches. Tab/Space conversions often upset the offsets used in deltas which results in a merge requiring manual intervention to correct conflicts. I don't care which one you use individually, but if you're working on a group project EVERYONE needs to be using the same settings.
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Let's be grateful for the first programmer that made an app to convert tabs to spaces and vice-versa... :rolleyes: I prefer tabs. :thumbsup:
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It is the efficient vs. the lazy in this argument. Most people are too lazy to change the flow. VS defaults to spaces so why change it. Watch the people who are in favor of coding with spaces actually code. Watch how slow they (usually) work. I am a tab man. All of my code is used only on Windows. I don't have to deal with using Unix and Windows for the same code base and I can type. Yes it matters. There is nothing worse than having to break away from the keyboard to use the mouse.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
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You know what I mean - you can have it so that a tab is a tab, and backspace removes it - or you can have it as usually 4 spaces so one tab takes four backspace hits to remove it. I like the first way and despise the second (it offends my need for symmetry), but seem to be alone in this in my current place of work. Or worse yet - "does it matter?" Please reassure me I'm in the right really....
Regards, Rob Philpott.
If you use spaces instead of tabs, you NEVER have a problem. Deleting spaces? WHY? That would only be necessary if you screwed up your code in the first place. Write cleaner code first time around. :) I'm modifying code in 25-year-old DB language. The original coder didn't use tabs or spaces. Now that sucks! (no comments, either)
Gary
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No, because Visual Studio (at least as recently as VS2008), still does not handle tabs correctly, especially when block indenting a selection.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
It is the efficient vs. the lazy in this argument. Most people are too lazy to change the flow. VS defaults to spaces so why change it. Watch the people who are in favor of coding with spaces actually code. Watch how slow they (usually) work. I am a tab man. All of my code is used only on Windows. I don't have to deal with using Unix and Windows for the same code base and I can type. Yes it matters. There is nothing worse than having to break away from the keyboard to use the mouse.
Need custom software developed? I do custom programming based primarily on MS tools with an emphasis on C# development and consulting. I also do Android Programming as I find it a refreshing break from the MS. "And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs" -- Robert Frost
@Ennis Sorry to bust your bubble but I use SPACES and I can wipe the floor (in terms of speed) of any of my co-workers who prefer using tabs. There are PROS & CONS to using TABS or SPACES and we could all argue whcih is better all day. What is important is that you are consistent in which you use within a project and that you note in your code that you use HARD TABS only or all spaces. That way anyone who has to revise your code knows what to expect. I routinely have to cleanup poorly constructed T-SQL (the SQL Server flavor of SQL) done by procedural programmers with no real RDBMS/SQL training/knowledge and the use of tabs in their code is a nightmare. I use UEStudio, the big brother of UltraEdit, to swap out all tabs with spaces in a single command; a big time saver. So in the end its really a matter of prefernece and specifc scenario and programmer as to whcih is really better no matter how hard one argues for all SPACES or all TABS.
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You know what I mean - you can have it so that a tab is a tab, and backspace removes it - or you can have it as usually 4 spaces so one tab takes four backspace hits to remove it. I like the first way and despise the second (it offends my need for symmetry), but seem to be alone in this in my current place of work. Or worse yet - "does it matter?" Please reassure me I'm in the right really....
Regards, Rob Philpott.
FYI - For those making teh case against using spaces because of the time it takes to backspace over tabs verses SPACES, your argument is weak at best. There are cases (scenario/project specific) for using TABS instead of SPACES however the argment of "takes too long to back space over" is not even close to one. If you use just your keyboard and have a hands off the mouse approach you can quickly and easily highlight multiple spaces with a few keyboard clicks depending on the app your using. If you can't do this then either the ditor you are using is carp and you need to switch or your working on code created by one of the TAB Nazi's and there's not much you can do but bare through it and fix their junk. A TAB NAZI is someone who over -uses tabs to the point of being an extremeist. Tabs and or multiple SPACES for indentation are meant for aligning code and make the code more legiable. Some developers let tabs get out of controal and indent their code WAYYYYYYYYY to far. If you are indenting your code with tabs by more then 4 spaces on the max end then you are over killing it. Anyone who can;t see indented code using 4 spaces needs to get their eyes checked. I have glasses and can easily see indentation with just 2 spaces (or 1 TAB set to 2 spaces). Don't be a TAB Nazi!
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Indeed. Obviously, a personal preference. 'tis what global search/replace is for. Me, I prefer 2 spaces but who cares? 'pretty easy to replace all tabs with such, then the next s/he can do the same.
I, too, set the indent for 2 spaces. Four spaces, or eight? Shows a lack of depth-of-thought. Low expectations. These (evil) tab users get their comeuppance when their spacing turns into trash in a new environment.
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