Re: Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces

From: David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle@gmail.com>
To: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2022 20:03:26 +0100

Play the video

tl/dr tabs are evil

On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 at 19:38, Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

1. The XML is in a standardized form, which makes it easier to write programs that talk and work together.

I don't see how tabs help, I'd normally detabify before processing.

2. The XML documents are smaller, as they have no wasteful embedded blanks.

hmm

3. Typing is faster.

any reasonable editor would indent automatically: you should never have to add multiple spaces or tabs "by hand"

in emacs I can use tab key anywhere on the line and the whole line will be indented to the correct amount (using spaces).

I'd have to use more keystrokes to add a literal tab (cntrl-Q <tab> for example)

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

really? I have ever seen a version of more that does that.

$ more r2.xml | grep -P '\t'
<Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>

shows it still has a tab

David

References:
- Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces
  - From: Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>

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