Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] Python style (Was: equery refactorization)

[Alec Warner]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 3:21 PM, Michael A. Smith <michael@××××××××.com> wrote:
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> Actually I don't like spaces for indentation at all. A tab character and a
> space character take the same number of bytes, so it takes two-to-eight
> times
> as much space per indentation to store the same indentation as a single tab
> character. On the average project that can add up to several kilobytes of
> difference. Furthermore, it completely _prevents_ collaborators from
> enjoying a
> bit of customization as to the amount of indentation. If I like my
> indentation
> to be two spaces, and you like yours to be four, then we can each set our
> text
> editors that way and continue to happily share code that uses tabs for
> indentation.

I would imagine most projects are not size constrained in their
sources; also most sources are zipped and it turns out a series of
spaces compresses rather well, so I don't find this to be a compelling
advantage (I have plenty of disk space, disk bandwidth, and network
bandwidth).  Perhaps when serving thousands of copies of a specific
tree this advantage will turn out to be useful in the long run (5k *
10000 req = 50meg savings.)

>
> I disagree with both PEP8 and Gentoo SOC styles on the matter. I would love
> it
> if someone could explain to me the actual benefit of using spaces over tabs.

My eyes hurt less ;)

But seriously, aside from what Douglas stated (spaces are displayed at
a constant size, and are typically smaller (on the display) than tabs
(I've never seen anyone use \t = ' ', but I guess it is possible)
there are no real benefits, it is a preference.

I'm not going to argue with you about which one is better; I agree
that tabs are nice due to tabwidth, but I still prefer spaces.

I don't think anyone on this list is nazi enough about style to reject
code based on it...I mean..you have seen portage right?  It is not the
pinnacle of style here ;)

>
> I'll reply to the rest of the equery refactorization thread in a different
> email.
>
> - -Michael
>
> Douglas Anderson wrote:
> |> [1] http://code.google.com/p/soc/wiki/PythonStyleGuide
> |>
> |
> | I'm with you there, I really like that style guide as well. We should
> | adopt it :)
> |
> | -Doug
>
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