TabsVsSpaces

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This is one of the CommonGripes and one of the HolyWars.

[Jamie Zawinski] has a great [page] on this subject.

I would some up his views and add a few of my own as follows:

Use the tab key as a command not a character
Use tab to space expansion
Use tab to invoke your editor's indentation algorithms
Do not use tab as an actual character (except in Makefiles)
Do not mix tab and space as indentation characters (if you are using tab at all)

Thoughts?

There's an interesting discussion between "tab people" and "space people" at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TabsVersusSpaces .

TabsVsSpaces is a specific instance of the Holy Wars over coding styles, I think.

I favor the attitude taken by the Tcl developers in urging their preferred style for Tcl code: 'The important thing isn't whether it's "better", it's that we all do it the same way.' Consistency is all. Different projects have adopted different conventions, and people working on the projects should adhere to them. It makes reading and comprehension easier, which is the whole point to having a convention.

I set my editors to render tabs as spaces on screen, defaulting to indentation levels of four. I also set them to use spaces rather than actual tab characters. There are some edge cases like Makefiles in which the programs which read them really want to see an actual tab char and barf if they don't, but those are the exception, and should be handled as such.

--DMcCunney