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Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces

• From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2022 18:38:21 +0000

Hi Folks,

Consider this XML document

<Document>
	<Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>
</Document>

There is a single newline character following <Document>
There is a single tab character preceding <Greeting>

By using the tab character, the XML document is only 48 characters. 

If I had used the equivalent number of spaces to indent, the XML document would be larger, 55 characters.

By using tabs consistently throughout my XML documents, I gain three benefits:

1. The XML is in a standardized form, which makes it easier to write programs that talk and work together.
2. The XML documents are smaller, as they have no wasteful embedded blanks.
3. Typing is faster.

You might object, "What if I feed the XML document into, say, a printer device that doesn't allow tabs?" Answer: simply write a detab tool that converts tabs to spaces. 

Note that many tools automatically detab text files. For example, the "more" tool automatically detabs.

more document.xml | printer-device

Comments?

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces
    • From: Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>
  • Re: Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces
    • From: David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle@gmail.com>