Date:         Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:03:06 -0400
Reply-To:     Paul Dorfman <sashole@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Paul Dorfman <sashole@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject:      Re: tabs vs spaces in SAS

Yevgeny,

First, I don't feel I have a right to tell anyone ("recommend") what style
to use or, for that matter, how to render it. If one find the tabs utile, so
be it, etc.

Now that it's out of the way, personally I avoid tabs (or any other
unprintable characters) in my SAS code like plague, and by the same token
prefer not to inherit code with such characters embedded. Instead of dealing
with maintenance woes caused by unprintables, I would rather spend extra
time to indent with spaces. Whilst I do consider code indentation and
alignment extremely important, I do not find SAS sufficiently verbose to
make code typing and editing take more than maybe 20 per cent of the
development time. Also, since when I work under DMS, I always use the SAS
Program Editor (ISPF-derived) and never the Enhanced Editor, moving blocks
of code horizontally is exceedingly easy, as Tom Abernathy has already
pointed out. Besides, in Program Editor, the line command COLS displays a
ruler, so it is really easy to check alignment if need be.

My tabby $.02.

Kind regards
------------
Paul Dorfman
Jax, FL
------------

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:15:17 -0400, Bolotin Yevgeniy
<YBolotin@SCHOOLS.NYC.GOV> wrote:

>What WILL the others think?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Data _null_; [mailto:iebupdte@gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 1:13 PM
>To: Bolotin Yevgeniy
>Subject: Re: Coding Standards
>
>You have it backwards.  SAS program files should not contain real tab
>characters.  Ask the list.  I will be interested to see what others
>think.
>
>On 3/28/12, Bolotin Yevgeniy <YBolotin@schools.nyc.gov> wrote:
>> Exactly my point
>> So using tab characters with custom tab stops, if you add a line and i
>add a
>> line, you see:
>>     Line1
>>     Line2
>> I see
>>       Line1
>>       Line2
>>
>>
>> Using spaces, we both see
>>     Line1
>>       Line2