Re: Use tabs rather than a series of (wasteful) spaces

tl/dr tabs are evil

On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 at 19:38, Roger L Costello <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> 1. The XML is in a standardized form, which makes it easier to write
> programs that talk and work together.
>
I don't see how tabs help, I'd normally detabify before processing.

2. The XML documents are smaller, as they have no wasteful embedded blanks.
>
hmm


> 3. Typing is faster.
>
any reasonable editor would indent automatically: you should never have to
add multiple spaces or tabs "by hand"
in emacs I can use tab key anywhere on the line and the whole line will be
indented to the correct amount (using spaces).
I'd have to use more keystrokes to add a literal tab (cntrl-Q <tab> for
example)


> You might object, "What if I feed the XML document into, say, a printer
> device that doesn't allow tabs?" Answer: simply write a detab tool that
> converts tabs to spaces.
>
> Note that many tools automatically detab text files. For example, the
> "more" tool automatically detabs.
>
> more document.xml | printer-device
>

really? I have ever seen a version of more that does that.


$ more r2.xml | grep -P '\t'
        <Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>


shows it still has a tab

David