Hacker News Reader

Comment by 10098 | Hacker News Reader

Well, sometimes I need to align my lines in a certain way (e.g., if function arguments are on multiple lines, I want them to align with each other). It's often impossible to do with tabs, because they are fixed width, so I have to add spaces. But when other people view my code, and their tab width is different, it all goes to chaos. That's why I prefer spaces over tabs.

View on HN

You're doing something wrong, then. Here's a block of dummy code indented with tabs; copy-paste it into your editor, change the tab widths, and observe that the indentation stays readable.

  void my_function(int some_parameter, int another_parameter,
                   int the_third_parameter) {
  	if (some_parameter != another_parameter) {
  		here_we_are_in_an_if();
  	}
  	function_calls_work_fine_too(some_parameter,
  	                             the_third_parameter);
  }

Maybe I don't understand the argument: what if `int the_third_parameter` lies on an odd column. How would one indent to that column using only tabs of an even shift width?

The optimal mechanism is to indent with tabs, and align with spaces (that is, you have the same number of preceding tabs as whatever you're trying to align with, and then use spaces from there).

Though setting your editor up to do that automatically is an incredible pain, and it kind of forces you to use a monospace font.

Ah, I didn't see the distinction between "indent" and "align."

Anyway, it seems like this system necessitates that the leading white space on a given line must be a mixture of both tab characters (\t) and spaces, unless one sets their editor to insert space characters as tabs (which is standard), and is obviously living in a state of sin.

On every line that is right-aligned, yes. Most lines would have only tabs.

Who isn't using a monospace font for code editing? I didn't even realize this was a thing.

The primary reason people use monospace fonts is historical inertia. It's definitely worth trying out a proportional font if your environment is amenable to it (some tools don't cope particularly well, for sad and disappointing reasons).

I tried doing that. It looks uglier than Sloth from the Goonies.

IIRC, Stroustoup uses a non-monospaced font in his C++ book.

tab to the indentation of the previous line, then pad with spaces

    def foo():
    TTbar(asdf, zxcv,
    TTSSSSqwer, oiuy)

no matter what anybody uses for tab stop size, the alignment won't get messed up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com