Re: The semicolon habit (was: Q: Definition of a scripting lang.)

>[use indentation rather than { } to show block structure ]


Although I kind of agree, I think we run into _lots_ of trouble when different
editors use different tab stops, and different people use different tabs
in their style, and people use "expand" with a different tabstop than they
should.


My co-worker and I have been working on the same code. She uses emacs,
I use softedit. When she tabs, it gets expanded to 8 chars. Mine are set
at 4. On the screen when she's editing, all looks fine. When I start
editing something she was editing, things look very wrong.


On the other hand, I used to program on a mainframe, using ISPF as a user
interface. The display panels that we programmed used an indentation-sensitive
IF-THEN-ELSE structure. It was nice because it kept the panel logic shorter,
and forced a partcular style. (Can't say I really liked that style, though,
but it _was_ consistent.)


On the mainframe, tabs were a non-issue. On UNIX, I think they could cause
tons of grief.


Scott Stanchfield
McCabe & Associates
Columbia, Maryland
--

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