[anand-bala]

I think the whole point of picking a language standard is to prevent the "space vs tabs" debate. Andrew is trying to standardize the language formatting issues, similar to tools like `rust fmt`, `gofmt` and `black`.

The "Spaces vs. Tabs" argument shouldn't be what stops you from joining hands and working together :)

[simias]

I completely agree with you, I love not caring about formatting anymore. That being said, does this mean that zig refuses to compile code containing tabs? Because that seems a bit counterproductive to me.

A great advantage of rustfmt and friends is that I don't really have to care about my editor being correctly configured, I can just code without worrying about style and run rustfmt before comitting. But if the compiler outright rejects poorly formatted code it means that I have to run the format tool every time I want to compile or risk having my code rejected due to format issues. Now I have to care about my style again! It's the opposite of what I want.

I mean it's a very small issue and mainly a bikeshed, but that seems like an odd decision to me.

[anand-bala]

You have a valid point, but if the only formatting issue you will have is tabs, then running `zig fmt` on your codebase is pretty much a non-issue.

If your project is small, just run `zig fmt` on the command line.

If you have a large codebase, you can just incorporate it into your build process (similar to how clang-format and clang-tidy are used in CMake projects).

But again, if you have a large codebase written in Zig, you've probably already configured your editor to run `zig fmt` on save :)

[littlestymaar]

> But again, if you have a large codebase written in Zig,

At this point it means you're probably Andrew himself because the Zig compiler is the only large Zig codebase out there;)

[_vvhw]

https://github.com/ifreund/river

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=124wdTckHNY

[m45t3r]

You can just configure your editor to run formatter on save or with a shortcut. Not really a deal breaker.

[ymbeld]

“Refuse to compile” makes it sound like the compiler is able to but unwilling to compile the code. It could very well be that the parser doesn’t recognize tab as a valid token.