The old text about tabs failed to clearly convey the message that the TAB character is used for indentation. It also gives the misleading impression that it's trying to "redefine" what a tab (the 0x09 ASCII character) is when it says "tabs are 8 characters". It might be misleading, especially for some autistic readers for whom English is not the first language and whose tendency to interpret things more literally might be present (i.e., my very own self). The present patch clarifies the tabs text on such aspects. Signed-off-by: Bru Moreira-Guedes <codeagain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/process/coding-style.rst | 14 ++++++++------ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst index 007e49ef6cec..9a0205fa7ed3 100644 --- a/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst +++ b/Documentation/process/coding-style.rst @@ -18,23 +18,25 @@ Anyway, here goes: 1) Indentation -------------- -Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8 characters. -There are heretic movements that try to make indentations 4 (or even 2!) -characters deep, and that is akin to trying to define the value of PI to -be 3. +The Linux Kernel uses the TAB character for indentation, as in the K&R +style. Tabs are meant to be viewed as 8-characters, and thus +indentations are meant to be seen as 8 characters as well. There are +heretic movements that try to use spaces for indentation, or make tabs +viewed as 4 (or even 2!) characters, and that is akin to trying to +define the value of PI to be 5. Rationale: The whole idea behind indentation is to clearly define where a block of control starts and ends. Especially when you've been looking at your screen for 20 straight hours, you'll find it a lot easier to see how the indentation works if you have large indentations. -Now, some people will claim that having 8-character indentations makes +Now, some people will claim that viewint 8-character tab indentations makes the code move too far to the right, and makes it hard to read on a 80-character terminal screen. The answer to that is that if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program. -In short, 8-char indents make things easier to read, and have the added +In short, 8-char tab size make things easier to read, and have the added benefit of warning you when you're nesting your functions too deep. Heed that warning. -- 2.39.2
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