[Pythonmac-SIG] Selecting in BBEdit & Python Indenting

[Chris Barker]

Ryan Wilcox wrote:
> Hmm... another idea would be to write a script and attach it to BBEdit's Save item so that it automatically performs Detab on your source code. Write in tabs, have it automagically convert to spaces. Such a script is below:
> 
> --name this "File•Save" and put it in the
> --~/Library/BBEdit/Menu Scripts
> on MenuSelect(menuName, menuItem)
> 	tell application "BBEdit"
> 		set myName to name of document 1
> 		
> 		if myName contains ".py" then --python file!!!!
> 			detab text document 1 tab width 4
> 		end if
> 	end tell
> 	return false --do the save operation
> end MenuSelect

This looks dangerous. In Python, tabs are hard coded to equal 8 spaces. 
Any other setting is asking for trouble. If you have only tabs it's not 
a problem, but if they get mixed....

Could you also write a script then entabed all python files on load? It 
would have to use 8 spaces per tab when it did it, but that would mean 
that it wouldn't put tabs in when there were four spaces. It would be 
better to write it in python, then you could use the python parser to 
figure out the indentation, an re-write the file with all tabs. There 
have been scripts to do this floating around for years. I used to use 
them all the time, but now, thank goodness, most people just use spaces.

All this because Bare Bones has decided for us that no one would ever 
want to map the delete key to mean "remove one level of indentation" 
when you're at the beginning of a line.

-Chris


-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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