Re: On Tabs and Spaces

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> [..] and if you're a vi user, you can do a ':set tabstop=4'

btw, don't get me wrong. I think 8-char tabstops are much better, and 
would much prefer to really teach people not to indent too deeply (because 
six-deep indents really look ugly as hell with 8-char indents).

So setting tabstops to smaller values is not something I think is good 
practice, but at least that way you can keep your dirty perversions to 
yourself, and don't have to admit to the world that you molest dogs and 
small children and use an inferior tab-stop.

The rest of the world might notice occsionally when you don't hide your 
non-indentation tab-uses well enough, of course, but keep to block 
comments and spaces for non-indentation, and you'll be reasonably safe.

However, if I see people actually having indentations six+ deep, I'll know 
that (a) you're likely a small-tab-misusing-deviant and (b) a horrible 
programmer. And then the tab-deviancy is the smaller problem.

(Yes, we do have some cases of six+ deep indentations in the kernel. I'm 
happy to say that they are fairly rare, and yes, I'm personally convinced 
that the 8-wide indent level is part of it. It really *does* end up 
encouraging people to split things up and write nested cases as separate 
functions etc, because it simply becomes so obvious when things are going 
south..)

			Linus