[erlang-questions] Controversial subject of the day: tabs and spaces for indentation

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

> ________________________________________
> From: Garrett Smith [g@REDACTED]
> Sent: Thursday, 06 February 2014 5:02 PM

> - Mixed tabs and spaces present challenges for programmer using
> different editors and contributing to projects with varied or poorly
> defined white space standards

This is somewhat misleadingly phrased.
Tabs do this all by themselves.

For example, I once spent some time using a programming
language where the IDE on Macs insisted that tabs were
equivalent to 4 spaces and the Unix command line tools
insisted that tabs were and could only be equivalent to
8 spaces, AND the language was indentation-sensitive.

So remember, it's not "mixed tabs and spaces present
challenges", it's "tabs present challenges".

The fundamental problem is that by design, tabs have
no common meaning other than "some amount of horizontal
white space".