Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@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 -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
