The One True Style of indentation

Oh wow! I love being the only one who does 2 spaces... It's just easier to do 2 spaces than 4 or a tab. And I use Notepad, so the tab is WAY to big. But I also double-enter blocks of code. Which makes it way easier to read.

I hate the way notepad has a tab width of 8 columns. Code with a lot of nested items can get pushed pretty far to the right.

I learned how to write rudimentary perl first, then JavaScript, and now I'm playing with PHP. Somewhere along the line I read that article and also the articles about where braces should go (in different languages) and I'm hopelessly addicted to using spaces instead of tabs (which is why I have the program set to replace tabs with spaces) -- if you go into another editor where the tab is set differently, you have a devil of a time with the code.

very good doc

LOL!

I personally use 4 spaces (well my editors sets this when I 'tab' anyhow) - because I code in Perl most often, I think this is 'right' => http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.6/pod/perlstyle.html .

I think the style and clarity of your code is amazingly important - so is proper annotation and comments. I've been in a situation before where you take over from someone's else's code, and if it's messy code it makes your job a hundred times harder!

Cheers

Gotta be one tab at a time 4 me. Only way I can keep track on what the hell I'm doing!

Plus its doesn't half help when you're trying to track down those pesky closing tags!

Oh, BTW... PHP's PEAR Coding Standards states, "Use an indent of 4 spaces, with no tabs."

This isn't fair!! :whine:

UNIX shell = 2 spaces
PHP, Perl = 4 spaces
VB = tabs

I also have my ASCII editor set to convert tabs to spaces. But I use M$ Visual Studio for VB, and I don't think they're advanced enough to include such a feature.

I voted 4 spaces because I use PHP the most.

Tabs for me. I also love tidy code - that's why I use an ancient editor to format my code (AOLpress).

I have my editor set to replace tabs with spaces, and the tab is set to 4. Can I answer both?

I love tidy code. Not only easier to troubleshoot, but easier to simplify. I tend to write it all out in long code as I'm building something, then gradually boil it down like a good spaghetti sauce to the right bits, automating and building functions and such as I go.

Having tidy code and comments REALLY helps that process.

It is so much easier debugging clean code than messy, plus its a reflection on the type of person you are!