Is it better to use spaces or tabs?
The analysis performed by the team at Stack Overflow found that programmers who use spaces instead of tabs are making more money. David Robinson, the data scientist who performed this study found that programmers using space over tabs made an average of 9 percent more each year than their tab using counterparts.
Is tab equal to 4 spaces?
Generally, a tab is the same width as 4 to 5 spaces provided the font being used equally sizes each character.
Is tab equal to 2 spaces?
Answer. In most code editors, tabs are not the same as 2 spaces or 4 spaces by default. Tabs can be seen as a big “jump” in the text, while spaces are always 1 space each. When you move your cursor in the code, you may notice this “jump” when going through tabs as opposed to spaces.
Does Linus Torvalds use tabs or spaces?
Linus Torvalds mandated 8-character wide tabs and 80-character line length limit for Linux kernel source code, not because he is a sadist but because it makes contributors refrain from writing deeply nested code. So despite using tabs, Linus forced everyone to use a fixed indent width.
Why do people care about tabs vs spaces?
Explanation on accepted answer: If a couple of people work on same file it is highly possible to generate unnecessary conflicts. Using spaces instead of tabs makes it possible to easily catch such an accidental space on eyeball and this is probably a reason, why using them become a standard.
Why would you use spaces over tabs?
Spaces provide visual indentation which remains consistent regardless of editor, settings, OS, etc. With tabs, switching to a different editor, or changing tab settings in your editor can change the visual look of your indentation.
Is a tab 4 or 8 spaces?
One last thought: The actual TAB character (ASCII 9) is always 8 spaces. Do not change the meaning of the TAB character in your editor. If you use 2 space or 4 space indentations, expand those to spaces.
Why are tabs bad in code?
Because it’s their preference. A convention they wish to be followed to keep uniformity (along with things like naming and brace style). Nothing more. Spaces are better than tabs because different editors and viewers, or different editor settings, might cause tabs to be displayed differently.
Should tabs be 2 or 4 spaces?
If you’re writing the code for yourself, you can use tabs. As long as you’re using consistent formatting rules, you’ll be fine. ‘Preference’ doesn’t come into it. Use 4 spaces per indentation level.
How many spaces is a TAV?
How much bytes a tab character uses in a text file depends on the character encoding. The ASCII character takes one byte: \t . Note that an editor may display a tab character as 2 or 4 spaces, or whatever is configured.
When should I use tabs?
Use tabs to alternate between views within the same context, not to navigate to different areas. This is the single most important point, because staying in place while alternating views is the reason we have tabs in the first place.
Should I use spaces or tabs?
If you’re a serious coder, then you should have a consistent use of tabs and spaces, where tabs (usually denoted by arrows) represent the level of indentation and spaces (usually denoted by dots) represent alignment characters. Here’s an example:
What are tabs and spaces?
Tabs and Spaces Podcast is a podcast put together by three developers with over 40 years of collective experience in software development. We’re here to tell you what we really think about the difficult problems that face software developers throughout their career and we promise that we won’t always agree!
How do you replace space with Tab?
The Replace tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. In the Find What box, enter a single space followed by the characters {2,}. (Type only the left brace, the number 2, the comma, and the right brace.) In the Replace With box, type ^t. Make sure the Use Wildcards check box is selected. Click on Replace All.
How many spaces are in a tab?
The equivalent number of spaces used to create a tab is usually five or eight spaces depending on the program being used and sometimes in the case of a word processor the font being used. However, keep in mind that a tab can be set to any value which means a tab could also be two, three, four, six, or seven spaces.