From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 4517 invoked from network); 5 Mar 2021 19:30:00 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 5 Mar 2021 19:30:00 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 319219CA7D; Sat, 6 Mar 2021 05:29:58 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 209269CA68; Sat, 6 Mar 2021 05:29:22 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 418CC9CA68; Sat, 6 Mar 2021 05:29:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: from central.weird.com (unknown [198.96.117.51]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68ECA9C9D6 for ; Sat, 6 Mar 2021 05:29:18 +1000 (AEST) Received: from (invalid client hostname: bind: DNS error: DNS lookup for A for 'more.local': Unknown host)more.local ((no PTR matching greeting name)d207-6-82-137.bchsia.telus.net[207.6.82.137] port=65066) by central.weird.com([198.96.117.51] port=587) via TCP with esmtp (3827 bytes) (sender: ) (ident using UNIX) id for ; Fri, 5 Mar 2021 14:29:17 -0500 (EST) (Smail-3.2.0.122-Pre 2005-Nov-17 #78 built 2020-Mar-25) Received: from more.local ([10.0.1.129] port=65067) by more.local([10.0.1.129] port=25) via TCP with esmtp (3351 bytes) (sender: ) id for ; Fri, 5 Mar 2021 11:29:16 -0800 (PST) (Smail-3.2.0.122-Pre 2005-Nov-17 #1 built 2015-Feb-17) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2021 11:29:15 -0800 From: "Greg A. Woods" To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list In-Reply-To: References: User-Agent: Wanderlust/2.15.9 (Almost Unreal) SEMI-EPG/1.14.7 (Harue) FLIM/1.14.9 (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Goj_?=) APEL/10.8 EasyPG/1.0.0 Emacs/23.3 (x86_64--netbsd) MULE/6.0 (HANACHIRUSATO) X-Face: ; j3Eth2XV8h1Yfu*uL{<:dQ$#E[DB0gemGZJ"J#4fH*][ lz; @-iwMv_u\6uIEKR0KY"=MzoQH#CrqBN`nG_5B@rrM8,f~Gr&h5a\= List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Reply-To: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" At Fri, 5 Mar 2021 11:44:49 -0500, M Douglas McIlroy wrote: Subject: [TUHS] tabs vs spaces - entab, detab > > > 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. Using tabs to save space was definitely more than an urban legend for some of us! (but there is a caveat below) When I started at UofCalgary we had a PDP-11/60 running 7th Edition (with about 16 terminals). It had an RX-02 mounted into the terminal room wall (the computer room was of course on the other side of the wall, with a nice big window so we could see the blinken lights (which are of course very few on an 11/60, but enough to tell when it was most busy churning the disks). Students were strongly encouraged to buy 8-1/2" disks at the books store and off-load anything they were not directly working on at any given time. (And when we upgraded to a VAX 11/780 with BSD, disk quotas were implemented as soon as possible.) Some of us found that we could fit considerably more data on those disks if we made sure we used tabs everywhere possible. We also obviously learned to have a "clean" target in our makefiles and to be sure to use it before we archived anything! However I think we were probably using tar, not a filesystem, on the floppies so that would of course have been what allowed for greater savings. I don't remember many of the details, though I do remember there was a program to reserve and "lock" the drive, and I think it changed the ownership of the device file(s) to the user requesting the reservation. As for the size of tabs, well I seem to recall students also traded tabstop setup files for various kinds of terminals so that each could see code indentations at their own preferred size. (Maybe this was done more on the Multics system though, and/or it was in the pre-Vi days when we used a custom full-screen editor called Fred.) -- Greg A. Woods Kelowna, BC +1 250 762-7675 RoboHack Planix, Inc. Avoncote Farms