[Haskell-beginners] indentation

[Jorden Mauro]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 4:46 PM, Stephen Blackheath [to
Haskell-Beginners] <mutilating.cauliflowers.stephen at blacksapphire.com>
wrote:
> Jorden,
>
> Cave persons such as yourself can use tabs as long as your tab size is 8
> characters.  This is "hard-coded" into the Haskell 98 specification.
>

My editor, being made of sticks, some rocks, and the jawbone of an
ass, just puts in a tab character. The graphical representation of a
tab character expands from the insertion point to the nearest multiple
of 8 characters, but that has no bearing on the file contents.

Also, there are situations when a tab-boundary is not enough. What is
the correct course of action here?

Currently, I usually try to change the line to spaces, or if I'm lazy,
I'll put spaces after tabs, which I don't feel good about. My editor
knows enough to indent the next line the same amount.

>
> Steve
>
> Jorden Mauro wrote:
>>> First of all, *don't mix tabs and spaces for indentation* (best, don't use
>>> tabs at all).
>>
>> I find the latter a bit too restrictive, especially since I use a text
>> editor that is a glorified version of ed. Hitting the spacebar 19
>> times is too much to ask of me.
>>
>> And as such, I am occasionally forced to do something when a tab
>> doesn't get me past the word `where' or `let', but isn't that the
>> majority of what Layout specifies?
>>
>> Is there a good answer for caveman programmers who like ed and tabs?
>