Questions tagged [indentation]
The indentation tag has no usage guidance.
27 questions
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3
answers
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Why do we still have programming languages that rely on indentation / white space? [duplicate]
A long time ago when starting learning programming I remember a teacher saying that compiler do not care about whitespace and they are useful to make code readable for human beings. It made perfect ...
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3
votes
1
answer
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Why tabs are evil in ES6? [closed]
As I have recently started using ES6 in production, I was going through an ES6 style guide (having more than 350 stars on GitHub). This guide mentions at least three times that "Tabs are evil. Don't ...
- 155
0
votes
3
answers
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"with open() as" and indentation
I could not find any official recommended indentation for the following idiom (straight from http://effbot.org/zone/python-with-statement.htm):
with open(path) as f:
data = f.read()
do ...
- 157
4
votes
5
answers
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C++ auto-indentation (auto-style) in a multi IDE team
Is there a convenient and sustainable way to handle code indentation and style in a team in which multiple IDE's (Emacs, XCode, VS) are used by different programmers?
We are using git, so, should we ...
- 149
2
votes
1
answer
562
views
Why does nobody use indentation in css? [closed]
I find css quite hard to read sometimes. Indents, depending on the dom structure, would greatly increase readability. Consider the following example:
#page {
text-align:center;
font-weight:...
- 179
8
votes
3
answers
219
views
Indentation in a multi-language file [closed]
In files that contain multiple languages (ie. template files), are there any best practises regarding indentation?
I mostly use this:
<div>
IF FOO
<div>
<p>...
- 267
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votes
8
answers
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At what point is it taboo to have loops within loops?
Just curious. The most I have ever had was a for loop within a for loop, because after reading this from Linus Torvalds:
Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8 characters.
There ...
- 3,613
2
votes
1
answer
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What is the name/origin for this C code indentation style?
Look at the formatting of the variable declarations. I haven't encountered this indentation style in the past, but lately I stumbled upon two different code examples which use this style. Where does ...
- 161
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votes
3
answers
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Origins of code indentation
I am interested in finding out who introduced code indentation, as well as when and where it was introduced.
It seems so critical to code comprehension, but it was not universal. Most Fortran and ...
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16
votes
5
answers
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Keep indentation level low [duplicate]
I hear a lot that you should not write functions larger than one screen size, that you should extract things into functions if you call things very often and all these coding guidelines. One of them ...
- 293
9
votes
4
answers
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How strict should you be about indentation/white space? [closed]
Our development process is as follows
code the task -> someone else QAs code and documentation -> task is merged into trunk.
Recently a colleague is refusing to pass the code QA due to issues with ...
- 2,677
15
votes
7
answers
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Should I write compact code or code with lots of spaces? [duplicate]
I have two friends that have completely different schools of thought on how to lay out their code.
The first says that code should be well-indented and use lots of spaces and to name variables ...
- 1,062
21
votes
5
answers
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views
What are the downsides of mixing tabs and spaces? [duplicate]
The advantage of using tabs for indentation is that people can configure their editor to use the tab width they are comfortable with. The only argument against this seems to be that people don't want ...
- 1,170
1
vote
1
answer
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Heredoc or an external template file in my bash script - how it affects readibility/maintanance?
I realise that this question may be down to personal preference but I'm pretty new to Bash / shell scripting so thought it'd be worth some research to see if there's some sort of standard/best ...
- 185
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votes
6
answers
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Reformatting and version control
Code formatting matters. Even indentation matters. And consistency is more important than minor improvements. But projects usually don't have a clear, complete, verifiable and enforced style guide ...
- 11.5k
4
votes
4
answers
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Indenting labels in C
I noticed that in the Vim automatically indents labels in a rather unintuitive way (IMHO).
int main(void) {
goto end;
end:
return 0
}
Are there any style guidelines for labels?
For the ...
- 752
3
votes
3
answers
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Eliminating tab characters in a new language
I'm working on a new programming language, which determines structure with indentation instead of braces in the manner of Python and CoffeeScript. Obviously placing lines indented with spaces next to ...
- 1,198
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votes
12
answers
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What are the drawbacks of elastic tabstops? [closed]
Look here: a typical holy war on tabs vs spaces.
Now look here: elastic tabstops. All problems solved, and a bunch of very useful new behaviours added.
Are elastic tabstops even mentioned in that ...
- 4,499
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votes
5
answers
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Why do some languages recommend using spaces rather than tabs? [closed]
Maybe I'm alone in this, but few things annoy me like people indenting using spaces rather than tabs. How is typing SpaceSpaceSpaceSpace easier and more intuitive than typing Tab? Sure, tab width is ...
- 1,631
4
votes
3
answers
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Why do XSLT editors insert tab or space characters into XSLT to format it? [closed]
All XSLT editors I've tried till now add tab or space characters to the XSLT to indent it for formatting. This is done even in places within the XSLT where these characters are significant to the XSLT ...
- 944
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votes
3
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What is the difference between K&R and One True Brace Style (1TBS) styles?
I have read the Wikipedia article on Indent Styles, but I still don't understand. What is the difference between K&R and 1TBS?
- 703
239
votes
14
answers
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How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation? [closed]
I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see'...
14
votes
8
answers
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Styling compound AND / OR if statements
How do you style complex compound AND / OR if statements for maximum readability? How do you indent and where do you place the line breaks? My particular situation is something like the following. It'...
- 1,495
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vote
2
answers
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"Functional" php indentation
I'm a big fan of 1tbs when it comes to c-like languages. Now that php got decent lambdas and closures, though, I'm not sure the style I'm using for them (fundamentally made up, has something to do ...
- 1,999
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votes
4
answers
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Correct alignment when outcommenting code
Suppose I have some code
void some_block(void)
{
some_statement_1();
some_statement_2();
some_statement_3();
}
Now I wish to out-comment statement #2, but here I never can find a way ...
- 1,186
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votes
9
answers
9k
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How to prevent deep indentations? [closed]
What steps and measures can I take to prevent deep indentations in my code?
- 8,219
84
votes
22
answers
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Tabs versus spaces—what is the proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever? [closed]
The coding standards for the code hosted in drupal.org suggest to use two spaces to indent the code; other sites suggest to use tabs to indent the code.
What is the proper indentation character for ...