Spaces vs Tabs

[Red Squirrel]

Which one is better, or does it matter?

It's all the same once it goes through the compiler... right?

 

[Mike64]

(E) None of the above.

It depends on the type of font and what sort of formatting you're trying to achieve. With monospace fonts, it rarely if ever matters since you always know how much white space is actually involved relative to the printable characters. With proportional fonts, it can make a big difference if you're trying to "line things up", since the relative spacing can change with different fonts (and while I"m not quite sure of this, possibly the size of the type as well.)

 

[Homerboy]

(E) None of the above.

It depends on the type of font and what sort of formatting you're trying to achieve. With monospace fonts, it rarely if ever matters since you always know how much white space is actually involved relative to the printable characters. With proportional fonts, it can make a big difference if you're trying to "line things up", since the relative spacing can change with different fonts (and while I"m not quite sure of this, possibly the size of the type as well.)

He's not talking about writing a letter.

 

[Homerboy]

Also OP, your 4th option is just stupid.

 

[Ken g6]

iI prefer spaces.<Esc>1G=G$i with ViM<Esc>:x

 

[Mike64]

He's not talking about writing a letter.

Neither was I. Though if he meant forum posts, the obvious answer is "does not matter" since bb formatting treats them the same without additional settings not typically available to forum posters, doesn't it?

Oops, never mind. In retrospect, I don't know what I thought that last word in his post was, but since this is in Off Topic rather than Programming, I didn't process that it was "compiler" or that the OP meant "in the context of code" until I saw the posts about Python and Lisp...

So as to the original question: spaces, all the way. They may not usually cause trouble, but in my limited experience anyway, no good can come of having extraneous non-printable characters floating around in a code file and while I don't often write code at all these days, when I do, it's invariably in a monospace font, so spaces work as well, if not better, for lining up lines....

 

[KeithTalent]

Halt and Catch Fire?

KT

 

[cbrunny]

Wynne for prison 2016.

 

[nakedfrog]

Tabs all the way.

 

[quikah]

It only matters in those crazy languages that treat whitespace as code (python, are there any others?). WTF, just use braces like a normal language.

 

[mundane]

We have pre-commit hooks to ban tabs from certain source files (lisp).

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wynne for prison 2016.

Someone should make lawn signs that say that lol. I bet they would sell!