this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

a tab’s length changes based on its position in a line

What does this even mean? A tab is a tab.

Tab's don't have multiple lengths inside a file, they all have the same length.

That's the point of tabs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The horizontal tabulation character moves the cursor to the next column which is a multiple of the tabulation length. See the examples here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key

At least for me, it renders like this:

Screenshot of a part of the linked Wikipedia page

Clearly the whitespace produced by each tab character has a different length.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The horizontal tabulation character moves the cursor to the next column which is a multiple of the tabulation length. See the examples here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key

Yes

Clearly the whitespace produced by each tab character has a different length.

No, each tab has the same size, the text rendered over the top of the tabs are not the same size.

Always remember the golden rule: Tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment.