Tabs and spaces (Re: [RFC 0/5] Date Mode: Add --time-zone; deprecate --date=local)

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 21, 2011, 00:07 UTC
Message-ID: <20110421000701.GA10987@elie>
In-Reply-To: <d74e95d4-ef16-42fb-ae8f-b1d7a8b9d91e-mfwitten@gmail.com>

Hi Michael,

Michael Witten wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> and I'm also responsible for this massive git flamewar of yore on the same
> subject:
> 
>   http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/61095
>   Message-ID: 634393B0-734A-4884-93E3-42F7D3CB157F@mit.edu

Heh. :)

> However - and this is the key point - if you are going to be mixing
> tabs and spaces ANYWAY, then you might as well do it in a way that
> maintains alignment within a tab level regardless of the current
> setting for the tabwidth:

In principle, I generally agree. But as mentioned in the thread you reference, most text editors don't make that very easy.

I personally use a tabwidth of 6 when I really want to concentrate on reading. When coding in a rush for other people, that leads to using tabstop of 8 and only aligning text that is much shorter than one tab:

	if (foo && bar && baz &&
	    qux && quux) {
		...
	} else if (quuux(quuuux, quuuuux,
				long_expresion_comes_here(quuuuuux))) {
		...
	}

As you can see, this is following the "put continuation lines near the right margin" convention advocated in linux-2.6's Documentation/CodingStyle.

Two advantages:

 - looks sensible with any tabstop
 - no need to cascade changes on following lines when the width of a
   function name changes

One major disadvantage:

 - annoys people who like everything nicely lined up.

For what it's worth. (Not much, of course --- the best rule is as always to make sure your code fits well with the code around it.)

Hope that helps, Jonathan