Rebuttals to Improper Pronunciation of GIF, Getting Started with Experis Web Framework 2. After, the file was 50kb LIGHTER! you can get an editor like Kate which presents tabs with a 'ghost' character - I can easily see tabs vs spaces when coding. Emacs or vi? Maybe that last bit isn’t important to you, but maybe you’re not passionate about what you do either. Now, of course, consistency matters more than either one, and a good IDE makes the differences negligible. But 1 character counts as 1 character, be it a space or a tab so the indentation seen by the compiler may not be the same one you see on the screen if you use tabs. Azure DevOps. Under Editor: Insert Spaces, uncheck the checkbox (or check, if using spaces) You can also set the tab site under Editor: Tab Size. The problem is that the installation defaults for (at least) some versions of Delphi don't match usual Delphi idioms. It also means that any new team member will also have to adopt our version of the acceptable number of spaces. Some people have a hard time knowing when to use spaces and when to use tabs, so for them it’s easier just to use spaces all the time. Most space apologists will claim that code can be minified or compressed in some way, but let’s be realistic. Here’s an example: This seems to confuse a lot of people in the space camp. Yes yes yes yes yes. With virtual formatting you choose the indentation width to suit the environment and indentation style without affecting any characters in the source file. What is the proper indentation character for everything, and in every situation? The first signs of this are showing up. It also leads to a mixture of tabs and spaces that only looks good when viewed in the original editor. Yes, with tabs you can decide your indentation level. Consider what the default behavior of your favorite editor, but pick whatever you like. However, tab users immediately recognize how painful it is to move through code with spaces. In theory, practice and theory are the Python is virtually the only language that got whitespace right to use tabs safely (but still - it offers only little advantage compared to "insert spaces"). Even so, the ability to move from one level of indentation to another is not addressed. Even if your editor does replace tabs with spaces, it usually doesn’t change how the arrow keys navigate through those characters. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/103278#103278. Period. All whitespace should be stripped from source files and the editior should apply presentation rules to the code. Just because your team has come to a decision on a set number of spaces per indentation, doesn’t mean that they’re all happy with it, that they’ll all honor it, or that the decision will work on anything other than new, start-from-scratch projects. Each tab is one level of indentation. This leads to ignorance as to what is actually happening behind the scenes, and novice coders never learn to use tabs as they’re meant to be used. We’re eventually going to have to negotiate on one or the other, and if I’ve been using four spaces, then it’s going to be hard to break that habit. Sounds kind of like tabs. I hope you don’t fall into that last group and that you care about how your code looks. I hope at this point of the article, I have cleared the air around tabs and why people feel that spaces are superior to tabs. Both space and tab characters take up one byte of space. I do not think that there is such thing as proper indentation (at least not without minor war). Coding conventions you use on your persona⦠People that use spaces instead of tabs think that this is just par for the course, but tab users have a big advantage here â they can use the code as-is. I replaced every 4 spaces with 1 TAB. See how much easier that was? Up until recently I had no idea that Visual Studio had the same option to display white space. The sheer, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/63#63, vi (or rather vim) is one of the better editors for working with tabs, As well as being able to set the tab width and automatically expand to spaces (like most editors can) you also have the. That said, the point of this thread is to be a holy war, so: Use tabs to indent the start of the line, one tab per indent level, and let everyone pick how wide they want that to be. You've never tried writing HAML, have you. Indents can be double spaces, 4 spaces, tabs, doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. And in environments such as docker, where an editor for the console such as nano is installed, used and then never touched again, I’d prefer spaces. 2) Saved space: Once, i had a very long PHP file. It’s quite simple: there are a huge number of advantages and very, very few reasons to use spaces â namely to work with teams that are stuck in their ways. Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 default to tabs for spacing, yet for some reason XNA (and perhaps Visual C# Express) defaults to 4 spaces. Use tabs for indentation. I don't know if you've done any Python programming, but it's relative indentation that matters. Ideally code should be considered data, and not be stored in any specific text formatting. It was JetBrain's Language Oriented Programming editor Meta Programming System (MPS) which first made me realize this resolves the entire discussion, simultaneously adding a lot of extra possibilities. **Disclosure: The XSLT Editor with virtual formatting was developed by my own company*. That is a really good feature of many editors -- the ability to go quickly through mounds and mounds of spaces. Try also other languages, legacy environments, diffs/merges, terminals, sccs to see why tabs are still utopic "ideal". Imagine if you forced everyone to use a specific font size or syntax highlighting. Now letâs see, why tabs are better than spaces. Good argument. In Microsoft Word I usually have the paragraph symbol turned on to Show Hidden Formatting Symbols (white space) so that I can clearly see spaces, tabs, and other white space characters. That breaks as soon as you start indenting for anything other than statement nesting. @Lorenzo: You are inefficient at keyboard code browsing. @finnw you assume everyone is using a monospaced font - in 2012, significant number of devs use proportional. It’s like switching from a two-button mouse to one with only one button â why would anyone do that? They are entrenched in a specific code editor and are highly resistant to change or anything that jeopardizes their current method of writing code. Only then you see tab formatted code right across all users and editors. I used to use spaces, but I've been using tabs lately purely because that's what Eclipse was set to when I finally noticed. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/152#152, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/2031#2031. This issue is read only, because it has been in ⦠In all others, it's a matter of personal taste and nowadays not a great deal - every decent editor has a "(leading) tabs to spaces" and "(leading) spaces to tabs" command. Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks "Tips and Tricks" lets you jump right in and learn how to be productive with Visual Studio Code. Every character in the XSLT has been highlighted in yellow, for illustrative purposes, to allow the only tab or space characters in the content to be seen clearly. Tabs are not originally meant for indentation, they are meant for. Warns users when a file opened or saved that contains a mixture of tabs & spaces. ": Have you never faced CR (represents moving the typewriter head to the front of the line)/LF (represents rotating the roller to the next line) issues? Vertical tabs give you the option to better utilize horizontal screen space and at the same time gives more vertical space for your code. @JordanReiter RE: "You don't see people getting all hung up on the return/enter key though. So I just sticked with spaces. I'm a 4 space kind of guy, tabs just aren't consistent. For example if you want to align function arguments on the same column, one per line. (Seriously, why is this even something that's discussed? I hate to say this, but I can't imagine programming in a variable-width font. More programmers now are choosing proportional fonts in their IDE for a more pleasant and productive coding experience. Perhaps that you need to upgrade :p ? It's possible by mixing tabs and spaces but very tedious. The other reason is that the tab character exist specifically for indentation, and was only later adopted for navigation. The extension is ⦠Did you catch it? We are excited to announce that the first preview of Vertical Document Tabs is available as part of Visual Studio version 16.4 Preview 2. Most projects will use 2 or 4. This quick 50 second video, shows you how to instantly convert spaces to tabs, or tabs to spaces. First letâs tackle tabs vs spaces, because thatâs probably the most important thing. I don't think either is "more readable" than the other. Visual Studio Shortcuts, Shortcut keys for Visual Studio. in my knowledge R# don't have an option for using sapces or tabs for indenting. The only holy grail of code formatting is to make certain that its consistent so that the psychopath who maintains your code after you doesn't feel compelled to remedy the situation permanently. At this point, we can say that spaces are pretty much equal to tabs if you donât consider that indentation example earlier. No matter what computer you are on, you expect hitting either the enter or the return key to take you to the next link. code is stored in a compact format beneficial to the system in question, as each dev opens the code, it is formatted exactly how they want it, when they have finished with it, back to the compact format. I would like to have VS Code detect and convert tabs to spaces automatically when it opens a text file. I've never worked doing Python development but my who have have all told me they use spaces so its interesting to meet someone who uses tabs. With spaces, we’re at the mercy of the developer and whether he/she was consistent with the number of spaces. VB uses spaces for indenting by default. In Visual Studio, use ctrl+r ctrl+w to show white space. If you're sharing code with other developers, you need to standardize, and since that's impossible (koff koff), you need to make everyone do four spaces. Tabs are consistent as a single Tab is an indentation, while you otherwise have to define how many spaces you will use for an indentation. Then you need an editor that's smart enough not to be stupid about that, to know that it should treat a line with four spaces at the front of it like it's indented. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/271#271, How are they "not consistent"? C++. 1. Take a look at the source code of just about any website’s HTML that relies on spaces for indentation, and you’ll find that the vast majority are not compressed. You can already set up RCS or CVS to use the, and it's prudent to use indent to force indenting/ code foramtting standarization so that devs with funny spacing ideas don't get, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/185#185. They are always a single character representing a single level of indentation. I had so many issues when people would only use 3 when I had used 4 everywhere else among other things. Furthermore, this view shouldn't be limited to just text, but can include tables, color pickers and mathematical formulas. Unfortunately, these now can't be distinguished from real content so the XSLT would have to be modified to correct this issue. Whether to use tabs or spaces when indenting code has been a source of contention among developers for some time. The only leading space characters precede the Books lines, because this is literal text content, not code, these space characters must be preserved. If the Indent size is set to 5, for example, then five space characters are inserted whenever you press the TAB key or the Increase Indent button on the Formatti⦠Every { starts an indent level, draw a tab (or 4 spaces). If not, then maybe that’s why you don’t see the problem with spaces. The only con I can think of, is that most terminal editors interpret tabs as 8 spaces (ugh)