On Mon, 07 Jul 2014 11:00:59 +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > The makefile syntax is one of the excellent examples of why it's a > terrible idea to use tab characters in source code.
Hmmm... I'm not sure that conclusion follows. I think that makefile syntax is an example of why it is a terrible idea to give spaces and tabs different semantics, not that tabs themselves are harmful. > It's also an > excellent example of how a poor design decision (a line beginning with > U+0020 SPACE is semantically different from a line beginning with U+0009 > CHARACTER TABULATION) can be irrevocable Yes. Design your public APIs cleanly and clearly from the start. The story of makefiles is a warning of the dark side to "release early, release often", and the dangers of using alpha software in production: [quote] Why the tab in column 1? Yacc was new, Lex was brand new. I hadn't tried either, so I figured this would be a good excuse to learn. After getting myself snarled up with my first stab at Lex, I just did something simple with the pattern newline-tab. It worked, it stayed. And then a few weeks later I had a user population of about a dozen, most of them friends, and I didn't want to screw up my embedded base. The rest, sadly, is history. -- Stuart Feldman [end quote] -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
