Does your coding style not involved lining function arguments (and other things) that are broken into two lines up vertically? Converting between 8 spaces and 4 would screw this up.
My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment. Under no circumstances should two consecutive lines be aligning something (with spaces) and have different levels of indentation (with tabs), I can't imagine why you would ever need to do this, so this has never been an issue for me.
My preferred whitespace code-style is to use tabs for indentation
What does "I convert it back to 4 space tabs before I commit anything" mean, then? If you're putting \t tabs in your file, 4 space tabs vs 8 space tabs refers to the way your editor renders \t. What are you changing before committing, your editor settings?
Edit: oops, just realized you're not the person I was responding to. The convert it back before I commit anything comment suggests he/she is using spaces. Or is very confused.
Sorry, I should have mentioned that I was not the GP. Even if you use spaces rather than tabs, the idea is the same. Do you mean something like the below? Note: \t represents tabbing (not necessarily the number of tabs, just spacing using tabs), and _ represents spaces.
int f(int x,
\t\t__int y) // one 4-width tab, pad with spaces
{
\t\t// do stuff;
}
int f(int x,
\t\t\t\tint y) // one 8-width tab, whoops
{
\t\t\t\t// do stuff;
}
In this case, you should not be using tabs, since logically you haven't entered a new block yet and as such should not be increasing the indentation. It should be
Even if you use spaces rather than tabs, the idea is the same
It's not, because there does not exist an editor that is smart enough to recognize that these 4 spaces are indentation tabs while these 4 spaces are spacing spaces. It's not impossible, but show me an editor that does it today (especially with C++) and I'll eat my hat :D
I agree with you that if you're using actual tabs for indentation it works fine.
>It's not, because there does not exist an editor that is smart enough to recognize that these 4 spaces are indentation tabs while these 4 spaces are spacing spaces.
Oh yes I see your point. All the more reason to use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment. :)
