From: david@lang.hm
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:03:51 GMT
Subject: Re: On Tabs and Spaces
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710172002020.10276@asgard.lang.hm>
In-Reply-To: <20071018024553.GA5186@coredump.intra.peff.net>

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Jeff King wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 05:59:27PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>> It happens. We do de-spacification in the kernel occasionally when it is
>> an annoyance. Usually it shows up in patches, though - exactly because
>> code which adds spaces instead of tabs won't line up correctly in the
>> diff.
>
> You have made this claim several times, and I really don't understand
> it. If I have 8 spaces, then a diff line will have either " ", "+", or
> "-" followed by 8 spaces. If I use a hard tab, then the tab will end up
> only taking up 7 spaces because of the nature of tabs.
>
> This might matter if I'm comparing non-diff code to diff code. But in a
> diff, _everything_ is indented by exactly one space, so it all lines up.
> Is there something I'm missing?

if the code uses a tab and the patch uses 8 spaces the two will not line 
up in the diff becouse in the diff output the tab is 'only 7 spaces;

useing one or the other isn't the problem, it's the mixing of the two.

David Lang