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[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-11-04, Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-11-04, D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net> wrote:
>> Right.  If you mangle spaces in Python or mangle braces in C then
>> recovery becomes impossible.  I don't think anyone is contesting that.
>> What we question is the idea that somehow Python is special in this
>> regard.  If you move files around in ways that change them then your
>> tools are broken.  The fact that the breakage is somewhat "friendlier"
>> to some types of files is interesting but irrelevant.
>
> Again, why does "diff -b" exist?
>
> It exists because so many things change whitespace unintentionally that
> it's a common failure mode.

It exists because so many people change whitespace intentionally in C
source code because no two C programmers seem able to agree on how to
format code.  Diff -b allows you to attempt to ignore semantically
null stylistic changes made by programmers.

-- 
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