CSC 209: Formatting your file

Please keep in mind that you are formatting your code to look good on all displays, not just your own. For example, if you have lines wider than 80 characters, you might be tempted simply to resize your window so that it's wider than 80 characters. But you can't resize the windows of all of the people reading your code. Keep in mind that your readers' windows might be as little as 80 characters wide. (Sometimes long strings exceed 80 characters anyway and this is ok, so long as you realize that it will wrap around on some people's computers.)

Similarly, a tab character represents spacing to the next multiple of 8 spaces. Your editor might have a command (or menu item) which says to change what the "tab stops" are. You should not use this command. Because again, you are affecting only your own viewing experience, not everyone else's. If you use a different editor, if you use the same editor from a different account or on a different computer, if you display the file with "cat" or print it on paper, it will be presented with 8-character tab stops.

If your editor has an option to use a different number of spaces when you press the tab key, this is not a problem, so long as when your editor writes out the file, it uses tabs to represent 8-character tab stops only. (E.g. some such editors don't write out tab characters on output at all; the tab key is just used as a handy data entry method in the editor, and all output to the file uses appropriate numbers of spaces.)