Re: tabs in source code

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* Smylers <Smylers@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-06-20 00:20]:
> Also, I'm not that bothered how big indentation levels are, but
> I do care that source code lines don't exceed 80 characters: I
> want them to fit in a standard size terminal, to be readable in
> an e-mail message, to be able to run diff on code and not find
> the lines are so long that it takes a dedicated 'Where's
> Wally'[*0] watcher to spot where the actual differences are.

I never understood this.

I tried to follow the rule for a long time, but I found that when
a line is 200 characters long, you either did something wrong and
should break it up into a few separate steps, at which point the
matter solves itself. Or it really has to be 200 characters long,
in which case all attempts to fit it into 80 column lines are
contortions that serve no other purpose than to distract while
reading but particularly while writing.

Any code formatting rule that cannot be formalised so that
software can do it is a bad formatting rule; and an aesthetically
pleasing choice of arbitrary places to break code in order to fit
it into a straightjacket is impossible to formalise.

So my code is generally well within 80 columns for any sane (or
even just vaguely sane) tab width, and I happily accept the few
overlong lines that do come up.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>;

• Smylers 23:18 on 19 Jun 2006
  • David Champion 23:56 on 19 Jun 2006
  • A. Pagaltzis 23:57 on 19 Jun 2006
    • Sean Conner 01:13 on 20 Jun 2006
      • too deep to show
    • peter (Peter da Silva) 23:04 on 23 Jun 2006
      • too deep to show
  • peter (Peter da Silva) 22:57 on 23 Jun 2006
    • Martin Ebourne 23:01 on 23 Jun 2006
      • too deep to show

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