Who are the "spacists"?

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>:

> Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> Unix tools which often assume spaces are used for indentation, and
>> consequently cope badly with tabs. I maintain that makes them
>> "broken" tools,
>
> They're not broken in the context of Unix, where there is a
> long-standing convention of assuming tab stops every 8 columns. From
> that point of view, tabs are not formatting instructions, but are just
> a way of compressing consecutive spaces. If tabs are used according to
> that convention, Unix tools cope with them just fine.

Correct, the 8-column interpretation is the only defensible use for
tabs. However, since that use is completely redundant, better not use
them at all.


Marko