On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Mike Hommey wrote: > > Actually, part of the mess with tabs is due to the fact they're not > exactly 8 spaces wide, but any width that ends at a multiple of 8 > characters from the start of the line. So 0 <= n < 8 spaces and a tab > is still 8 spaces. Umm.. That's the definition of "tab width". The tab width is 8. Not "0 < n <= 8". Not "depends on where you are". The tab width is 8. The whole history of tab is that it comes from mechanical "tab stops" that you could set, and that were independent of the text - pressing the tab key would move to the next tab stop. Now, those tab stops were movable, and in fact, I think lots of terminals still support setting those tab stops dynamically (ie you can send control sequences to set their "tab stops" to different points, exactly like an old mechanical typewriter). But when it comes to computers, 8-character wide tab stops is the de-facto standard. It's what every single terminal defaults to. It's the only thing that some printers/terminals support. Anything else is by definition non-standard. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
