Questions tagged [whitespace]
The whitespace tag has no usage guidance.
20
questions
4
votes
1
answer
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views
What is the problem with whitespace in C that Ruby allegedly repeated?
I'm reading the book The Secret Life of Programs by Jonathan E. Steinhart. In it, he mentions in passing:
many consider the handling of whitespace in Ruby to be a replay of of a mistake in the ...
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3
votes
3
answers
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views
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 ...
- 444
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
2
votes
4
answers
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views
What coding practices are most useful dealing with trailing whitespace in data fields in binary files?
We have an application that consists binary files (containing a mix of text and numeric information) and programs written in various languages that create, modify and read these binary files. Because ...
- 2,690
0
votes
2
answers
104
views
Use spaces between parameters? [closed]
Is it poor practice to not use spaces between parameters in a scripting language (or any for that matter)?
With spaces:
def does_a_thing(x, y):
...
does_a_thing(5, 9)
Without spaces:
def ...
- 167
-2
votes
2
answers
180
views
Tracking column (offset) in presence of tab characters
Imagine that you first write a compiler for your language where you necessarily report errors to the user. Compiler also collects location information for backend tools. They must know where the ...
5
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Should I edit a codebase's whitespace to conform to a coding style? [duplicate]
We have a large Java project (1m+ SLOC) with mixed whitespace - some files have tabs and some have spaces. It's tricky to make my editor work with whichever file I happen to be editing.
We are ...
- 324
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votes
11
answers
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Is too much whitespace a bad thing? [closed]
I'm often told by my friends and colleagues that I use way to much whitespace. I guess I do use a little too much whitespace. I often add a line break almost after every line and large blocks of ...
- 225
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4
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Is lack of whitespace a sign of a cargo cult programmer? [closed]
Eric Lippert has written about cargo cult programming, and Steve McConnell has tackled the subject from a Software Engineering point of view.
Eric provides a fairly succinct description:
They ...
user53019
0
votes
1
answer
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views
How using tab affects commands like diff
In the page at http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.indenting.php, it is advised to use space instead of tab as it causes issue with diff, patches. Here is the excerpt from the page.
Use an ...
user88873
9
votes
4
answers
2k
views
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 ...
- 2,543
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votes
3
answers
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views
When should you trim input?
I am intern learning tons about the industry outside of academia.
One thing I thought about today was trimming input.
On one side of the coin I don't want the user/implementer to constantly ...
- 265
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votes
7
answers
6k
views
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 ...
- 1,042
1
vote
2
answers
514
views
Python code style - blank lines in long list
I'm curious, is there a standard approach to dealing with long lists in the Python community, and in particular, is there any antipathy toward doing blank lines followed by comments to break up a ...
- 113
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Is "watermarking" code with random trailing whitespace a good way to detect plagiarism?
Consider this:
int f(int x)
{
return 2 * x * x;
}
and this
int squareAndDouble(int y)
{
return 2*y*y;
}
If you found these in independent bodies of code, you ...
- 403
3
votes
4
answers
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views
Convention for writing Python without newlines or whitespace?
Is there a convention for writing Python when deprived of newlines and whitespace? For example, stackexchange comments, Twitter, text messages...
- 3,419
3
votes
6
answers
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views
How do you limit whitespace differences for developers using different IDEs/environments?
I've used UltraEdit for years and never had a problem with sharing code with fellow developers whether they worked on Windows, Mac, Linux, Eclipse, Visual Studio -- what have you...
But now I am in ...
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votes
8
answers
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Why is trailing whitespace a big deal? [closed]
Trailing whitespace is enough of a problem for programmers that editors like Emacs have special functions that highlight it or get rid of it automatically, and many coding standards require you to ...
- 10.8k
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votes
10
answers
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views
Do Python programmers find the whitespace issue inconvenient? [closed]
Many programmers, upon first encountering Python, are immediately put off by the significance of whitespace. I've heard a variety of reasons that this is inconvenient, but I've never heard a complaint ...
- 12.1k
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votes
6
answers
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Vertical alignment: yea or nay? [closed]
For instance, non-vertically aligned:
Name: Hamt
Version: 0.1.0
Cabal-Version: >= 1.2
License: BSD3
Author: Jason Baker
Or vertically aligned:
Name: Hamt
Version: 0.1.0
...
- 9,615