From: Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>
To: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] tabs vs spaces - entab, detab
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2021 17:05:37 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAC20D2ONQGS+O6OfKRqBMPyjy3G2LT0Z-rF=jBQ75SzdHHM_bA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210306213811.GF1054@mcvoy.com>
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On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 4:38 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 07, 2021 at 08:31:57AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > (Straying into COFF territory here)
> >
> > On Fri, 5 Mar 2021, John Gilmore wrote:
> >
> > >The one that got me was make(1). Being used to text editors that used
> > >"tab" as a command rather than a literal character, I proposed a fix
> early
> > >on at Sun that would allow leading spaces as well as tabs in Makefiles.
> > >(I think this was in the Unisoft Unix days, pre-BSD.) Bill Shannon
> > >actually put it into their source tree. But in a few days or weeks, he
> > >took it back out, because he realized that Makefiles built on Suns using
> > >leading spaces wouldn't work anywhere else.
> >
> > I loathe make's distinguishment between tabs and spaces; they look the
> same
> > on the screen, and last I looked computers are supposed to serve humans
> and
> > not the other way around.
>
> Has anyone asked Stu Feldman why make wanted a tab? Or does anyone know?
> I have to believe there was a better reason than it was one tab vs
> 8 spaces.
>
According to Eric Raymond in Chapter 15. Tools: make: Automating Your
Recipes", *The Art of Unix Programming*
*Why the tab in column 1? Yacc <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacc> was
new, Lex <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)> was brand new. I
hadn't tried either, so I figured this would be a good excuse to learn.
After getting myself snarled up with my first stab at Lex, I just did
something simple with the pattern newline-tab. It worked, it stayed. And
then a few weeks later I had a user population of about a dozen, most of
them friends, and I didn't want to screw up my embedded base. The rest,
sadly, is history.*
*— Stuart Feldman*
ᐧ
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-03-06 22:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 78+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-03-04 16:52 Will Senn
2021-03-04 16:59 ` Clem Cole
2021-03-04 18:31 ` arnold
2021-03-04 19:23 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-03-04 19:37 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-03-04 19:50 ` Rob Pike
2021-03-04 21:20 ` Robert Clausecker
2021-03-04 21:25 ` Will Senn
2021-03-05 9:58 ` John Gilmore
2021-03-06 21:31 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-06 21:38 ` Larry McVoy
2021-03-06 22:05 ` Clem Cole [this message]
2021-03-15 3:02 ` John Cowan
2021-03-15 18:15 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-03-15 21:19 ` Bakul Shah
2021-03-15 23:47 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-03-16 3:10 ` Earl Baugh
2021-03-15 21:08 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-15 21:12 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-03-15 21:24 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-15 22:06 ` Adam Thornton
2021-03-16 13:25 ` arnold
2021-03-17 5:10 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-06 21:40 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-03-04 18:48 ` emanuel stiebler
2021-03-05 0:44 ` John Cowan
2021-03-05 0:55 ` Larry McVoy
2021-03-05 1:09 ` George Michaelson
2021-03-05 1:21 ` Larry McVoy
2021-03-05 1:29 ` Richard Salz
2021-03-04 18:33 ` John P. Linderman
2021-03-04 21:24 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-04 21:27 ` Will Senn
2021-03-04 21:29 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-04 21:42 ` Will Senn
2021-03-04 21:48 ` John P. Linderman
2021-03-04 22:08 ` Andy Kosela
2021-03-04 22:12 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-05 14:13 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-03-05 20:24 ` John Cowan
2021-03-05 21:51 ` Bakul Shah
2021-03-06 23:43 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-03-05 0:15 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-03-06 21:22 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-06 23:58 ` Bakul Shah
2021-03-07 0:03 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-03-07 0:25 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-03-07 9:16 ` Brantley Coile
2021-03-05 9:50 ` [TUHS] tunefs -m 5% John Gilmore
2021-03-05 15:01 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-03-05 15:32 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-03-06 1:18 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-06 1:52 ` Warner Losh
2021-03-06 21:45 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-06 22:03 ` Larry McVoy
2021-03-09 4:59 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-06 23:52 ` David Barto
2021-03-06 1:16 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-03-04 22:10 ` [TUHS] tabs vs spaces - entab, detab Greg A. Woods
2021-03-05 1:41 ` alan
2021-03-05 1:55 ` alan
2021-03-05 2:06 ` Will Senn
2021-03-05 17:08 ` Clem Cole
2021-03-05 17:19 ` Richard Salz
2021-03-05 19:39 ` Lawrence Stewart
2021-03-05 19:51 ` Dan Halbert
2021-03-08 1:52 ` Will Senn
2021-03-05 16:43 ` Scot Jenkins via TUHS
2021-03-05 22:23 ` Bakul Shah
2021-03-06 20:51 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-03-06 21:01 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-03-06 21:19 ` Larry McVoy
2021-03-06 22:01 ` Clem Cole
2021-03-05 16:44 M Douglas McIlroy
2021-03-05 19:29 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-03-06 23:21 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-03-05 22:50 Norman Wilson
2021-03-07 2:53 Nelson H. F. Beebe
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