From: M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] tabs vs spaces - entab, detab
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 11:44:49 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiU58Fp=KQohX9M-qryQPsYd3aT=0YeT3YvBKiMowEdzyA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
> The reason to use tab was file size for one
This is urban legend. The percentage of 512-byte blocks that
tabs would save was never significant.
(I agree that tabs and--especially--newlines can significantly
compress fixed-field formats from punched-card tradition, but
on the tiny Unix systems where tab conventions were
established, big tabular files were very rare.)
Tabs were a convenience for typists. Of course the tty driver
could have replaced them with spaces, but that would have
foreclosed important usage such as tab-separated fields and
run-time-adjustable tab stops tab-separated fields.
(I have run into latter-day trouble with selecting a space-substituted tab
from a screen, only to discover that I was copying or searching for spaces
instead of the tab.. That's not an intrinsic problem, though. Editors like sam
handle it without fuss.)
Doug
next reply other threads:[~2021-03-05 16:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 68+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-03-05 16:44 M Douglas McIlroy [this message]
2021-03-05 19:29 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-03-06 23:21 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-03-07 2:53 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2021-03-05 22:50 Norman Wilson
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
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
2021-03-04 22:10 ` 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
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