> So in this situation, when the file is being read, is that > single space still determined to be a tab, or do you have to > press tab twice to put a full tab between the names?
If there is a literal tab in the file, it will come in (to your code) as a real tab. Your editor may have settings you can tweak to make it a little more apparent. Vim (my preferred poison) allows you to :set list to see representations the literal tabs in your file. To turn it off, do :set nolist You can also tweak your tabstops: :set ts=12 (or whatever number/size accomodates your widest columns) which would make a single tab character expand to your desired size. This should help line matters up visually a little better. Alternatively, with vim you can highlight the tabs to make them stand out a bit more: :match ErrorMsg /\t/ (or you can use another color instead of the ErrorMsg color...if you hit <tab> after typing ":match ", it will successively show you alternatives, or you can use ctrl+D to show a number of them) Just a few ideas with a vim spin. Other quality editors should support similar functionality. -tkc -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list