(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)

[ewx]

[Poll #959499]

(Ignoring languages like make where you don't have any choice.)

Comments

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

You missed: prefer spaces to tabs where practical

Or even: prefer spaces to tabs where practical, and always use spaces in Python

so I chose the combination of options that best expressed this.

[simont]

I'm somewhere between "don't mind" and "avoid". Using tabs in my free software causes me to get a steady trickle of confused mail from people who have loaded it into an editor which interprets a physical tab differently from the standard (notably Visual Studio, which AIUI can be configured into sensible mode but not per-project), and also I sometimes find it actually inconvenient during editing because tabs make complicated editor macros less predictable. So I quite like no-tabs as a policy. But I haven't adopted it yet, mostly because detabbing all my existing source would be a tedious and annoying job with plenty of scope for messing things up and would also have unhelpful effects on things like "svn blame".

Work enforces a no-tabs policy by automatic detabbing at checkin time (and you have to specially mark each makefile as exempt from this when you create it). This is surprisingly infrequently a problem, and generally seems to work well for everybody. (Though I don't think I'd go that far myself, although I might be tempted by refusing a checkin that contained an unsanctioned tab.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Not to be mixed, at all costs? Otherwise, I don't mind so much. I'm sure one is better, but I have generally been constrained, so haven't found out which.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

It depends whether the IDE does indentation by inserting spaces or a TAB character.

Now for the hard question: do you do tabs in SQL?

[reddragdiva]

[X] A four-space tab killed my parents, you insensitive clod

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

*puts on novice geeky hat*

Well, we were taught that tabs in your code, when used correctly, make your code clearer (and certainly, in Java I found it useful to mark out where different methods were in the flow of things). On the other hand, having tabs but no curly braces (like in Python) confuses rather than helps me for some reason. :/

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

The trouble with tab characters is that they don't, by themselves, specify enough information to display them. You need to know where the tab stops are; in the absence of this information then there's no reason to expect text to come out looking the same way in different environments.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

                        
         
     
       
        
        
     
       
       
     
       
       
        
      
     
        
        (http://search.cpan.org/~dconway/Acme-Bleach-1.12/lib/Acme/Bleach.pm)

[fanf]

http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

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