Nicolas Calimet wrote:

>> PS: You should really consider using a sane tab width with something like
>> four spaces per tab, and not unreadable eight spaces per tab!
> 
> IMO you should never use tabs when writing some code, as they
> make it very unreadable for most people (who usually don't bother setting
> the tab width -- if ever possible).  I'd say tabs can be used safely IF
> your editor converts them automatically to a small amount of spaces
> (ideally 2 -- my personal choice -- to 4).
> 
I completely disagree. You _should_ always use tabs for indention because 
it saves a lot of bytes on your hd and because anybody can adjust the 
indention depth on his own editor to fit his needs. 

I, for example, am used to tab width 4 and I don't like code written 
with space-2 indention (too small indention). 

I once read that this indention issue was actually the reason for tabs 
being invented. 

One could argue that today disk space is cheap but see the following 
example: 
Linux-2.6.3 kernel code would be 24 Mb (!!) larger if people used 
4 spaces instead of one tab. That is nearly 15% more just for eye candy. 
And that would enlarge the .tgz archive by 770 kb (37.9 -> 38.7 Mb) which 
would take me 3 minutes longer for the download (my 56k modem has 
4.4k/sec average). 

The proper way to do intention is to use tabs. 

Wolfgang

Post a reply to this message