• zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Then you lose the benefit of tabs: you can’t adjust the tab width without destroying alignment. So you end up with a confusing mix of characters for no benefit.

    Mixing them is the worst option.

    • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The opposite is true, though. If you use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment, you can adjust the tab width without destroying alignment. That’s the big benefit of the tabs-for-indentation-spaces-for-alignment mix.

      You can’t do that with only tab characters, you can’t even align stuff with tabs because it has variable width.

    • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      You might not understand how to do it properly so here’s the idea:

      Tabs will let you reach the indentation level of the current block, then from here, you’ll use spaces to align stuff property. Here’s an example, where >••• are tabs (I’m exaggerating alignment for the sake of the example) :

      >•••if (condition1 == true
      >••• || condition2 != false)
      >•••{
      >•••>•••struct ident people[] = [
      >•••>•••>•••{
      >•••>•••>•••>•••.name   = "bob",
      >•••>•••>•••>•••.pubkey = "value1",
      >•••>•••>•••},
      >•••>•••>•••{
      >•••>•••>•••>•••.name   = "alice",
      >•••>•••>•••>•••.pubkey = "value2",
      >•••>•••>•••}
      >•••>•••];
      >•••>•••secureConnection(people[0].name, people[0].pubkey,
      >•••>•••                 people[1].name, people[1].pubkey,
      >•••>•••                 CRYPTO_ALGO_DEFAULT);
      >•••}
      

      As you can see, everything will stay correctly aligned as long as it’s within the same block.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      You’re confusing using tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment with using tabs and spaces for indentation. This means each line starts with tabs. Next you optionally have spaces for alignment with previous lines. Then you have content (like code or comments). Because you never have a tab following a space the alignment is never destroyed by adjusting how wide a tabstop is.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          That example is using tabs for both indentation and alignment. The article you linked even says not using tabs for alignment is a solution.

          • Do not use tabs for alignment. In such case given example should look like:
          fun foo x =
          --->let val abs = if x > 0
          --->              then x
          --->              else -x
          --->in
          --->--->(* ... *)
          --->end
          
          • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Yes, but keep reading. That strategy is a pain to maintain especially across editors.

            • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Many styles are difficult to maintain, I’m not saying it is or isn’t. I’m saying that using only spaces for alignment will not let your alignment get messed up with various tabstops settings.