From: Linus Torvalds Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 03:38:12 GMT Subject: Re: Get rid of .git/branches/ and .git/remotes/? Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20051122032014.32539.qmail@science.horizon.com> On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, linux@horizon.com wrote: > > Actually, most indentation-sensitive languages have a simpler solution: > they don't try to convert whitespace strings to a number like "horizontal > position"; they just compare strings. Yes, but that doesn't really change the problem: you can't _visually_ see what is wrong in most editors (some editors end up showing tabs as something that isn't quite whitespace, but that's also really irritating). This is like Makefiles: if you have spaces in the wrong place, it may all _look_ fine, but the Makefile just doesn't work. Really irritating. And obviously using the file will show the problem (the parser will complain with a nice line number and readable error, hopefully), but I personally find that to just be too damn late. By then, you're already irritated. So I like the notion of depending on indentation, but I just feel it falls down in practice. Of course, since I believe that tabs are always exactly 8 characters, I'd also be perfectly happy to just declare that anybody who disagrees with me is a moron and deserves to die (*). Linus (*) That's obviously true of _anything_ that people disagree with me on, but at the same time, I have this nagging suspicion that it's just better to not depend on indentation.