Finding out how many spaces a tab character is expended to

[Alex Beamish]

On 10/29/07, John McGregor <mr.mcgregor-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> According to this document, the default no. of spaces for tab in Perl is
> 4 (line 141), but other references I saw in a cursory search for
> 'default  number of spaces for tab in perl'  showed that the default is
> 8 or that it is arbitrary.
>
> http://search.cpan.org/src/DMUEY/Text-InHTML-v0.0.3/lib/Text/InHTML.pm

Asking how many spaces a tab expands to on a mailing list is about as
safe as prodding a sleeping dragon. Historically, the answer has been
8, but that's by no means definitive.

I think the correct answer is "Whatever turns out looking right",
which means the answer is arbitrary.

-- 
Alex Beamish
Toronto, Ontario
aka talexb
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