But it’s not until everything goes wrong that you really wished you had chosen the correct method and stuck with it. Unless I’m writing YAML, Markdown, or text intended to be read in a terminal, I always indent my code with leading hard tabs. Archive; About; tabs ↹ over ␣ ␣ ␣ spaces by Jiří {x2} Činčura Entity Framework 6 with Firebird . A lot of space wasted with no gain. Nor is it the only case where people indent stuff *beyond* the initial indentation. As tablets have become more prevalent, a new debate has formed over whether schools should replace print textbooks by tablets. data from github suggests that around 10-33 percent of the java repositories prefer tabs, and the majority use spaces in different formations, preferring four spaces over two. How will you work? And, hey, sure you could argue that in an age of hyper-fast broadband that’s no longer relevant either, but remember mobile users – and even with 120-bytes of useless junk shaved off every plain-text file transferred, it has a pretty big impact in the long-term. (and yes, “flexible” or “smart” tabs sound awesome, but are impractical in mixed environments where IDE/editor support is so spotty). The problem is that your file with tabs ADDED a tab to the existing blanks, it didn't replace a blank with a tab. [1] Again, use TABs to indent, spaces to align and space. if (someVar === otherVar) bar(); // If we're otherVar This changes the placement of some of the values and, since you are using an explicit format, the values are in the wrong columns. The last entry on our tabstop tour is an example that only uses tabs for block level indentation, which some people use as a solution to the above problems. let users add tabs to their input. Spaces. Now you need to make sure a developer only uses tabs for block level indentation, and spaces for alignment purposes. This means either having a development environment in the VM (and thus not needing Notepad) or having a volume mounted to your host machine (and thus not needing Notepad). updateExample('blockIndentOnly',2); 1) Not only that, use 2 indented space also, as most libraries/API’s you may import/use in your projects will generally use this spaced indenting method. { 7) IMPORTANT: This is the new Lightning Web Components version of the Easy Spaces sample application. In the "Tabs" Tab, enter the tab position and the alignment for the fields. Maybe it’s not very relevant… but you don’t gain anything by using more space and generating more C02. replaceAll(String regex, String replacement)– Replaces each substring of this string that matches the given regular expression with the given replacement. The reason I use spaces is because the environment is self-describing. if (someVar === otherVar) bar(); // If we're otherVar function foo() { else if (isThing) otherFn(); // Do awesome stuff !) Not all programs default at 4 tabs. For example, in the Java look and feel you can select the tab labeled "Tab 3" by typing Alt-3. 4) This may be perceived as twice the space of a normal space. There is a mixture of both here. Either manual or automatic reformatting all around. Every IDE/editor has (at least it should!) else if (isThing) otherFn(); // Do awesome stuff You will see 2 spaces, he – 4 spaces and you both will be happy. Tabs, spaces, and size of indentations. The main reason to use tabs rather than spaces IMO: I don’t know about you guys, but I mostly navigate through the code using the arrow keys. But in practice, people use them wrong. isThing = someVar === anotherVariable; // Is thing? 6) 6) Hah. anotherFunction(); Forcing everyone to put comments on the previous line, however, *is* weird and limiting. A TAB, the key on the left of the Q of most Qwerty keyboards, is a single character that a text editor can represent whatever way it wants. Granted, this is an edge case and the dump still would’ve been huge, but had the coder have used tabs for indentation, the damn log wouldn’t have taken forever to transfer when we already had our hands full. It is used to create a space in a … The simplest way to create a TabControl is using Visual Studio .NET. When programs are “too” smart, they often take decision when they shouldn’t and make stupid things. You can make the third example code work perfect with tabs and spaces: You just have to be patient and add staces to lines that have less chars than other lines, and add tabs before the comments. Hey there, long time no see! Insignificant Whitespace. I will get your code, my editor will automatically transform your spaces to tabs and I will feel like home. Tabs vs. What if I need to change 1 line and other 3 expands automatically to be visually aligned? This is IMO no longer relevant. Another EXCELLENT benefit of using 2 spaces/tab is that when you want to share code (stackoverflow, gist.github.com, jsfiddle.com, etc…) and you copy from your IDE and paste in the “DHTML” enabled textareas, you actually get readable, code. Now one concern is really important however: how do we achieve consistency ? Less memory, more customisable. I replaced every 4 spaces with 1 TAB. Compared to that, the problems mentioned in this article are irrelevant, and anyway very rare. else quux(); // Do bad stuff!! I wasn’t implying one would *want* to code in Notepad, simply that sometimes, coders won’t always have a choice in what program they have to use. ... Indent of tab with VariableDeclarator set to 2 will indent the multi-line variable declarations with 2 tabs. background-color:hsl(0,0%,90%); This is a static archive. This has the advantage of not inflicting your tab width choices on other people, while also being able to produce aligned comments and code and stuff. I didn’t mind it initially, but last few years I was more and more unhappy about it. The way in which you indent your code may seem trivial, and for the most part it usually is. Even if this is the most tolerable solution, it introduces yet another wrench into enforcing style with other developers. What's the best way to format your code? Yes, the fact that you can change the tab width is a great option to have, but if it requires you to reformat your code then it is not actually a real feature of using tabs, it’s the same situation in any scenario. If you’re a Sublime Text user you can add these rules to your Preferences.sublime-settings file to ensure tabs get converted to spaces and also use 2 spaces as a default indentation level: Got opinions of your own? Why Programmers Who Use Spaces Instead of Tabs Make More Money. anotherVariable = 2, // Another var The currently-selected tab is usually highlighted in a brighter color than the others. Space vs tab, a different opinion. The first downside is that it quickly becomes a mess. E.g., if I have to break a long line of code in C# into 2 lines, I want the 2nd line to be aligned to the 1st line at a "smart" position (e.g. Yes, I understand your hypothetical, and of course nobody would *want* to code in Notepad – I just don’t buy the notion that anyone is ever actually stuck with Notepad for actually editing actual code. function foo() { Pro-spaces programmers argue that using the space bar makes the layout more flexible. Next you will do the same (but the other way around) and you will be happy. It’s not inconsistency, it’s just *using the right tool for the job*. Even when you think there is some advantage using one method or other, really all is a problem of preferences. If you like spaces then use them. (I’ll admit this is an edge case that’s kinda tangential to the main discussion). One of the most used Visual Studio extensions is Productivity Power Tools. It’s annoying to navigate through spaces with the keyboard. Because, yeah, that’s kinda why tabs were invented… to indent text into columns. Some points to note about LTRIM: If the trim_string is a literal value, you need to include it inside single quotes. Every IDE/editor supports replacing tab presses with a dynamic and variable number of spaces until you get to the appropriate indentation level. In this tutorial, I will explain how to create and use a TabControl in your Windows applications with C#. All the careful alignment goes to crap when you change the tab width. If you ignore the side-aligned comments for a moment, then tabs come out of your demonstration pretty well, you can modify the tab size and the code looks good for everyone. The server with the repository had hundred of such files. It’s good that the indent sizes can be changed, but it’s bad that the comment gap sizes can be changed. If you’re editing code inside a VM and not being obtuse about it, then you should have some way to get those changes into your source control. While this extra whitespace causes no functional issues, many code conventions require that trailing spaces be removed before check-in. Worst case, use shift+tab. Using proc export in SAS, you can easily write out your data to a file with values delimited by commas, tabs, spaces, or other characters. 3. There’s a sort of similar argument that we need to support old web browsers because enterprise IT departments are five years behind, and thus people are stuck with IE8 at work. Until compilers decide that one or the other is a compile error anyway…. Directly after the code a comment follows separated by a single space. Below is the same example as above, but optimized for a 2 character width tab. If, instead, you need to replace spaces with tabs, see Example 4-24. Please visit jarrodoverson.com The ion-tabs component does not have any styling and works as a router outlet in order to handle navigation. Each number … You have to press it four times to de-dent. I never really understood the Tabs vs Spaces debate. Then I suggest you use .editorconfig files so these nuisances can someday be made history. .tabExample pre { Going back to my original hypothetic example, in the off-chance that I AM making a stupid fix to crap code in a restrictive environment, I’m not going to copy+paste diarrhetic runs of space characters just to appease some a spaced-out coder, or mindlessly tapping the spacebar like a confused old person. Here's the tabs vs. spaces style I prefer: I prefer to use tabs for indentation. Contributors/teams do still need to set a common config as to the number of spaces for indentation, but that is better than assuming you don’t need to do that with tabs and getting conflicting code style regardless. The server with the repository had hundred of such files. } The only settings that you should be able to change is the line length if you don’t like the default 88 characters. } Lewis: you’re implying every editor will have that configuration. If you are like me, every job or open source project you look at seems to have an annoying mix of tabs and spaces that will make them always wrong all the time anyway. Not all operating systems, code editors/IDE’s treat code indentation the same way. I agree with the tab advocates that tabs are clearly superior, in theory. The larger file size problem with spaces comes a distant second compared to the “Yikes, this file looks ugly as sin” effect that I get when I open one of those files where multiple people have edited it incorrectly with varying tab settings. I changed 1 line, but version control shows 4 changed lines. The benefit here is unmistakableintent. If you set your editor to not-wrapping mode then you need to scroll horizontally. You’d have to reach an agreement anyways if using spaces regarding the amount of spaces to use, so why not use tabs and agree in the tab width configuration instead? You can see black in action here: https://black.now.sh. })(), .tab { The displayed width for tabs can be set to arbitrary values in most programming editors, including Notepad++ (MS-Windows), TextEdit (MacOS/X), Emacs (unix), vi (unix), and nano (unix). This extension has an option which alerts a person when the file uses both tabs and spaces, and suggests to replace either tabs by spaces, or spaces by tabs. For example − TanmayPatil and Tanmay Patil The above two elements are different because of the space between Tanmay and Patil. Which is why spaces wins. $('#twoSpaces').html($('#twoSpaceExample').html()); Solution: if your IDE doesn’t allow “smart tabbing” (switching to spaces when inserting an indent after a non-whitespace character), just avoid aligning with tabs altogether (or just save your effort for manually aligning more pertinent things like comment blocks). Congratulations, I’m going to be an space dude for now on. Once, i had a very long PHP file. if (anotherVariable === 42) { // If it's the answer $someVar = ‘foo’; // Some comment And seeing that the main reasoning for using spaces is the side-line comments (which I personally use and like as much as the above-line comments), here is the alternative: Let’s agree with all the team the width of the tab character so everyone can see the code well formatted. > All programs (or almost) allow to customize the tab length. else if (isThing) otherFn(); // Do awesome stuff To enter a tab, use ,, (2 commas). So why is anybody doing stuff that can be done by computer? There is annoyingly, good reason to argue though. Xcode uses tabs; that’s what causes the messed-up alignment when you change the tab width. For example, I accept that tabs are superior to spaces. 100 tabs = 400 spaces. And here another one: Please spend 5 minutes on… var someVar = 1, // Some var But I’ve never seen an good explanation on the “leads to confusion” argument. } 1. Example: For conceptual simplicity and orthogonality, if you want to treat python programs as text files, and deal with them using standard text processing tools, it is much more comfortable when the indentation is marked by a single character. So if you’re using tab indentation, you will have to convert the imported libraries to tabs. When analyzing the data, a couple of the factors that were being used to … // (PS i saved this code with spaces but they are removed by disquss). “They’re a character specifically meant for indentation. updateExample('twoSpaceTab',2); Also with compressing proxies (Opera and Google) and also on-the-fly gzip compression done by the server and undone by the client, over-the-wire space isn’t that important either – especially, if one takes into consideration, how many images and how huge these beasts are. '); } Just keep in mind that any actual tab characters (not a bunch of spaces that look like tabs), that you use with this method might appear ridiculously wide. Example: Indent of 4 spaces with VariableDeclarator set to 2 will indent the multi-line variable declarations with 8 spaces. Removing spaces using replaceAll() method Java example. — Also, many editors get de-denting wrong so you can’t even fall back to using Shift+Tab. Their main graph seemed simple and straightforward, and I kinda liked it at first glance. By searching for tags asking for help, teachers can give instant feedback to students who are struggling. This is the main point why people thought spaces are better. This is called a non-breaking space because it prevents a line break at its location. Some links may not work. $('#'+example+' pre').html(TabFormatter.format($('#'+example+'Example').html(),numTabs,' ',1,'','')); Why not. 3) We’re in the age of terabyte disks. The only problem is that some editors want to transmute your tabs to spaces or back again — which I feel is quite wrong, as they are not the same thing. var someVar = 1, // Some var Kind of like a coding zen garden. In all the debates I've ever read about tabs vs spaces, I've never seen anyone bring up the point I'm about to make for why tabs are better: When you use tabs, it enables you to select blocks of code with the mouse (yes, the mouse) and be accurate with your selection so that it includes no leading or trailing spaces, without needing to click at the exact spot where the code block begins or ends.