Oh boy, you do want to pour muddy water on the table. I generally believed in tabs set every 4 spaces. That's Steven's used in all his UNIX books. Have to ask Rob what and bwk used but I sort of think it was pretty similar. A problem is a lot of people had tabs set at 8 spaces.

Clem

On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 11:53 AM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

OK. So, I've been trying to decide (for the last time, I swear) whether to use tabs or spaces in my code... I did a quick pulse-check on the state of argument and it appears to be alive and well in 2021. My question for y'all is, was there a preference in the very early days or not? I saw an article talking about the 20 year feud, but that's not my recollection. In 1994, nobody agreed on this, but I'm sure it predates my entree into the field. I'm thinking the history of entab and detab are somehow related, but I've been wrong on these sorts of thoughts before. What say you?

Will