[Bro-Dev] whitespace convention (tab vs. space)

Robin Sommer robin at icir.org
Thu Mar 17 09:16:37 PDT 2011


On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 10:49 -0500, you wrote:

> I'm having trouble deciding when to use tabs versus spaces for leading whitespace...

Not surprising. :) The underlying rules are:

> * Existing C/C++ source files seem to mostly use tabs, but it's mixed in some places.
> * Bro policy script source files look like they mostly use tabs

Indentation-style due to Vern -> Tabs. However, sometimes spaces are
slipping in via contributions from others (including me). That can
(and should) be normalized to tabs when noticed.

> * Python (broctl) source files seem to be mostly spaces
> * reST source files for documentation seem to be spaces

Indentation-style due to Robin -> Spaces. 

> Not sure if I missed any cases, but what's standard convention, if there is one?

I guess the implicit rule so far was that subprojects have their own
style conventions.

> I kind of dislike tabs in any case, but even more than that I dislike
> mixing tabs/spaces or having to switch between the two frequently.

I don't like tabs either but as you say, it's even worse to mix.

Btw, there's an item on our todo-list-once-we-find-a-student: finding
a tool that we can pipe all the source code through to canonify
formatting.

Robin

-- 
Robin Sommer * Phone +1 (510) 722-6541 * robin at icir.org
ICSI/LBNL    * Fax   +1 (510) 666-2956 *   www.icir.org


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