From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-03-23T10:39:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Any guides for good coding in Ruby? [OT] tabs vs. spaces

In article <4240A7A2.4050703@infofiend.com>,
Ben Giddings  <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> wrote:
>Martin Ankerl wrote:
>>> I try to follow the style that is predominant in the Ruby parts of the
>>> Ruby source.  Also, see:
>> 
>> I also do this, but there is one thing I cannot stand: every ruby lib 
>> uses 2 spaces for indentation! IMHO it should be tabs, and *only* tabs. 
>> This is much better, because in almost every editor it is possible to 
>> set the tab width to whatever one likes. I hate 2 spaced sourcecode, 
>> because I usually set one tab == 8 spaces, and use a non-fixed font.
>
>Yay!  Let's start a tabs vs. spaces flame war!!
>
>My view?  Tabs should never, ever be used in a file.  (Ever)  Can you 
>have a source code file without spaces?  I doubt it.  Can you have a 
>file without tabs?  Certainly.  Is mixing the two the main problem? 
>Yup.  Use only spaces.

Amen.  and I am a vi user (see below).
The lucky thing for us Ruby users is that the number of spaces/tabs (while 
the two might look the same on the screen) doesn't matter to the 
interpreter as it does with another language that starts with a P.

>
>It's funny though.  I think this eternal flame war is related to the 
>other eternal flame war: vi vs. emacs.  In Emacs, the 'tab' button is 
>most often bound to 'indent-command'.  This and 'indent-region' makes it 
>really easy to use spaces for indentation, and to adjust/fix someone 
>else's indentation when it's bad.  On the other hand, I think vi makes 
>it much harder to use spaces for indentation, so tabs seem more attractive.
>

Actually, there are autoindent modes for vim - there's one for Ruby code.

Phil