Spaces are for alignment. For instance, right now in HTML it appears to produce 2 spaces per press of TAB⦠In terms of how many spaces (or tabs) constitutes indentation, it's more important to be consistent throughout your code than to use any specific tab stop value. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/657#657. you can get an editor like Kate which presents tabs with a 'ghost' character - I can easily see tabs vs spaces when coding. You should use. Formatting using characters is inflexible and can cause conflict when different styles are used within a team. 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. This leads to inconsistent, sloppy code. ": 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? If you use tabs and allow people to set their tabstops differently, they will break alignment for all but the simplest cases of code indenting. 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. The only leading space characters precede the Books lines, because this is literal text content, not code, these space characters must be preserved. Even so, the ability to move from one level of indentation to another is not addressed. Applies the indenting and space formatting for the language as specified on the Formatting pane of the language in the Text Editor section of the Options dialog to the selected text. Use tabs. I don't think either is "more readable" than the other. Besides, it's blatantly obvious that everyone in the world should be using vim, which makes it trivial to indent, unindent, and navigate through "tab stops" even in space-indented files. Where does this misconception come from that âtabs exist specifically for indentationâ? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/103289#103289, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/26170#26170, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/118508#118508, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/111492#111492, Tabs versus spaces—what is the proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever? I tell my editor what to do then I don't think about it again, the editor works out the details. In this day and age we should separate presentation from code. The problem is that the installation defaults for (at least) some versions of Delphi don't match usual Delphi idioms. With tabs, I can use the left/right arrow keys to move back or forward one level of indentation with each key press. Setting the displayed tab size to 3 or 5 characters in your IDE greatly simplifies distinguishing between code sections that are indented by spaces (almost always 4 these days) and those that are indented by tab. Most projects will use 2 or 4. Neither is better, neither is worse. If you are on a team, do what the team does. same. Period. I had so many issues when people would only use 3 when I had used 4 everywhere else among other things. Tabs for COMPUTERS are to indent, and it is only by convention that the name of the key matches that of the typewriter. The answer is that there can be no single proper indentation character for every situation. These arguments are stupid and the solution is decoupling logic from presentation. You can even set the indentation width to 0, if you need a flattened view of the code as shown below: To contrast this with space character formatting, the same XSLT opened in an editor without virtual formatting is transformed by that editor's auto-formatter to this: The larger blank yellow blocks in the screenshot above clearly show the space characters added by the formatter of the conventional editor. Everyone is happy as they all see their 'own' format. In Sublime Text 2, add the “draw_white_space” setting to your user preferences and set it to “all”. Honestly, is this so difficult? Each tab is one level of indentation. How often have you been typing an Office document where you had to do a double-take to see if you had typed two spaces instead of one? This means that a large majority of the code that is shared online uses spaces instead of tabs. Standards are important when it comes to code. The fact the the answer with fewer votes is actually first is testament to that: why should the asker get a special power (i.e. The first downside is that it quickly becomes a mess. Here are a few possible reasons. Visual Studio. Did you catch it? I'm a 4 space kind of guy, tabs just aren't consistent. You don't use one key to issue a line feed and one to issue a carriage return. (Seriously, why is this even something that's discussed? Any modern IDE or programmers' editor can auto-flow code with spaces instead of tabs. In Sublime Text 2, add the âdraw_white_spaceâ setting to your user preferences and set it to âallâ. @Fishtoaster: When you say that Joel says spaces, shouldn't the link be to an actual Joel quote? The only con I can think of, is that most terminal editors interpret tabs as 8 spaces (ugh) Use tabs for indentation. Indentation in Visual Studio is controlled with the use of the tab key, which can be used to insert tab characters or spaces into the code or to indent or unindent selected lines. 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. It's impossible to half-indent something with tabs. If you are a team of one, pick whatever you personally like. You might want to consider using a comma, insetad of a tab, as this is defined in the standard. Customization is an advantage. 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. Spaces are a poor fit for indentation simply on the fact that you can’t easily see an individual space character among groups of spaces. As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. one of them uses tab-width 1 because he uses such a gigantic font-size. And find and punch all the early software authors who let this stupid thing become an issue in the first place. Can you provide an example of this? It's terrible. What do I mean by “not portable?” I mean that if you share your space-indented code with anyone else (e.g. You'll become familiar with its powerful editing, code intelligence, and source code control features and learn useful keyboard shortcuts. These people are usually disorganized and write code that is difficult to maintain. Many programmers don’t care about what their code looks like. You can’t accidentally forget a part of a tab, but you can easily enter three spaces instead of four. Quick question: How many levels of indentation are there in the line with the //Case 1 comment? Plenty of arguments have been given already, but nobody mentioned where we could be headed in the future. This idea isn't too far-fetched. @finnw you assume everyone is using a monospaced font - in 2012, significant number of devs use proportional. 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. I think the answer is tabs are treated as spaces. Hopefully, you code with visible white space markers. Let me say that this isn’t a solution; it exacerbates the problem and makes it nearly impossible to insert an actual tab character. 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. @MaR: Where did I state 'equivalent number of spaces'? https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/103278#103278. Previously released as part of Productivity Power Tools. What’s Up with the Ban on CSS ID Selectors? Rebuttals to Improper Pronunciation of GIF, Getting Started with Experis Web Framework 2. @Lorenzo: You are inefficient at keyboard code browsing. That is a really good feature of many editors -- the ability to go quickly through mounds and mounds of spaces. C++. then just pick an arbitrary maximum expected tab size (such as 4) and keep within the margins for tabs at that width. Coding conventions you use on your persona⦠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. @JordanReiter RE: "You don't see people getting all hung up on the return/enter key though. Tab characters, space characters, or both will be inserted to fill the specified size. See mod_pagespeed to see what I mean. wrt "more productive", personally I hit TAB and let the IDE do the conversion for the appropriate number of space characters to introduce. Each developer can configure their environment to use a specific tab width; whether it be two, four, or even eight spaces. In Visual Studio, use ctrl+r ctrl+w to show white space. Why are we doing space space space space when a simple tab would work? So indentation wouldn't matter. My preference for 4 spaces comes from starting out with Python. Why should I be mandated to your 2 or 4 SPACES of indentation when a TAB can be dynamically set and indicate a single level of indentation? Seems you can't even give a good reasoning why it is impractical, haters gonna hate... ;). You’ve probably learned to naturally compensate by using your mouse and clicking to place the cursor where you want or some other keyboard combination. Here’s an example: This seems to confuse a lot of people in the space camp. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/2037#2037. Space vs tab, a different opinion. Visual Studio for Mac.NET. Now letâs see, why tabs are better than spaces. Finding errors with improperly nested code is much easier when tabs are used. All of the other developers on my team use Eclipse, so it made sense to standardise on tabs when we realised we'd already been using them for ages and there was no reason to bother changing to spaces. I'd love to see one of the big players jump on the concept of this technology and see what happens! Convert Spaces To Tabs For A Visual Studio Solution or Project Posted on August 19, 2010 by chrismay I recently installed some VS.Net power tools, and 1 of the tools is something that tells you when you have a file with mixed tabs and spaces, giving you the chance to ⦠The coding standards for the code hosted in drupal.org suggest to use two spaces to indent the code; other sites suggest to use tabs to indent the code. See how much easier that was? 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. By default, Visual Studio shows a tab as four spaces. The default is four spaces. The code indentation is handled by the editor's rendering system adjusting the left margin (which has a white background). all those online tutorials where you can copy/paste the code), the recipient is going to have to reformat it for his/her environment. Maybe that last bit isn’t important to you, but maybe you’re not passionate about what you do either. I used to use tabs too, but I was running into trouble with some IDEs that couldn't insert spaces for continuation lines and I hated to replace all those auto-inserted tabs with spaces (Visual Studio was one of them). Unfortunately, tabs are unevenly implemented, so the only real world solution is 4 spaces. Visual Studio Code Tips and Tricks "Tips and Tricks" lets you jump right in and learn how to be productive with Visual Studio Code. Then I started to work as part of a team and share code. Both space and tab characters take up one byte of space. Even programmers who should be used to abstract thinking seems to confuse tabs and spaces ("if it looks like four spaces, then it must be four spaces!"). This makes everyone happy. In Visual Studio, use ctrl+r ctrl+w to show white space. I quickly became a proponent of spaces. Now, I hear you saying that almost all modern code software can automatically replace a tab with a certain number of spaces. Comments disabled on deleted / locked posts / reviews, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/66#66. Indents can be double spaces, 4 spaces, tabs, doesn't matter as long as you're consistent. However, in none of these debates have I found a legitimate reason for spaces instead of tabs â at least not when both sides have a firm understanding of how tabs are to be used (i.e. 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. I have the Whitespacer extension which can ⦠Why I prefer tab (or: why tab exist): 1) Almost all programs use now tab = 4 spaces as default; All programs allow to customize the tab length. Many hard-core coders will point out that there are editors such as Vim with very efficient keyboard navigation that doesn’t rely on the arrow keys or that you can use keyboard shortcuts (like ctrl+left arrow) to move through white space, but not everyone uses those editors (or is proficient with them), and shortcuts are often still more complex. This one should be obvious. Yes yes yes yes yes. Many code editors, Visual Studio included, default to replacing tabs with spaces and not showing white space characters. Spaces or Tabs - What Atwood really says is pick one thing and be consistent in your project. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/268#268. Why are you being a white space Nazi? i get approached by not one, but TWO coworkers who unfortunately are highly visually impaired, and each has a different visual impairment. Try also other languages, legacy environments, diffs/merges, terminals, sccs to see why tabs are still utopic "ideal". For example, when coding in C#, if your codebase has a convention to prefer that indents always consist of five space characters, documents use UTF-8 encoding, and each line always ends with a CR/LF, you can configure an .editorconfigfile to do that. The default is four spaces. Plus spaces allow you to use half-sized indents for things like, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/57/tabs-versus-spaces-what-is-the-proper-indentation-character-for-everything-in-e/165#165. @Timwi: sorry to necro, but the computer tab key was NOT invented for tabulation. @MGOwen The download time argument for website coding is easily resolved nowadays using source minifying on css/javascript and whitespace removal on HTML. Spaces, because when you align comments to the right of code, or function parameter lists, or complex multiline expressions, or things of that nature, you want your beautiful work to appear right for everyone. A repository for code, thoughts, and anything else. **Disclosure: The XSLT Editor with virtual formatting was developed by my own company*. Suppose I like four spaces per level of indentation, but my colleagues prefer three. Perhaps answering the tabs-vs.-spaces indentation question forever, a developer has used Google's BigQuery analytics tool to investigate all things related to the C# programming language in GitHub's vast trove of open source code projects.
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