Newsgroups: comp.text Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!tmsoft!eci386!woods From: woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) Subject: Re: Are TABS bad? Message-ID: <1991Apr2.222031.1603@eci386.uucp> Reply-To: woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) Organization: Elegant Communications Inc. References: <9336@castle.ed.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1991 22:20:31 GMT In article <9336@castle.ed.ac.uk> yfcw14@castle.ed.ac.uk (K P Donnelly) writes: > davis@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu ("John E. Davis") writes: > > It seems to me that a tab character in a text file is a bad thing since > >there is some ambiguity over what it means. > > Hear hear! I hate tabs. I wish they had never been invented. The > operating system we use does not support tabs. Every so often I get a > mail message which looks a real mess - I now know to try writing it to a > file and detabbing it, because it probably contains tab characters. Then again, setting "standard" tabstops on your "terminal" would probably "fix" your problem too. Almost every sane terminal I've dealt with defaults to fixed tabstops every 8 spaces, starting at the first position (i.e. before any spaces). Oh well, for those insane terminals that keep creeping up there's a tty driver flag to cause tab expansion. [ Thank goodness this isn't comp.terminals, or I'd probably get even more flames than I anticipate! :-) ] > We are starting to move to the Unix operating system. It seems to me > that tabs are used all over the place in Unix as a primitive file > structuring mechanism. Yes, and any sane person who uses tabs for such things follows the same conventions as the sane terminals I outlined above. What I hate about the way some people and programmes use tabs is when they have a logical tabsize of, say 4, and yet they use tab characters for 8-space physical fills. Vi is especially prone to this abuse. > The tabs are usually invisible by default when > files are displayed, and they add complication to all programs which are > written to process text files. Say what? Yes, tabs are either expanded by the UNIX terminal driver, or by the terminal itself. Any programme processing text files should treat tabs like any other character, such as space or newline. Any ambiguity can usually be removed by collapsing tabs and spaces into one character (unless "empty" fields are allowed for some weird reason). > There is ambiguity about whether tabs > are structuring elements or space saving devices. Not if you are aware of the source of the file. :-) In general input, especially human generated input, to programmes is, IMHO, best with tabs, and output, especially formatted (i.e. columnar) output is best with spaces. -- Greg A. Woods woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP ECI and UniForum Canada +1-416-443-1734 [h] +1-416-595-5425 [w] VE3TCP Toronto, Ontario CANADA Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible-ORWELL