On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Guy Lapalme wrote:
this explanation is very good but the real confusion comes from the fact that probably there were some TAB characters in the original program. In the text editor used for typing the program the tabs stops were 4 spaces apart as they are usually nowadays because otherwise programs become too wide...
[...]
Concrete suggestions about this any one?
Nothing which has to with Haskell, but: I think it's a bad idea to expand tabstops to something other then the "standard" (historic?) positions, i.e. 8 spaces apart. Nearly every editor can handle indentation independent of the TAB character, for example indentation in vi (^T) uses the parameter "shiftwidth" for indentation. Then, *leading* spaces are compressed to tabstops, if appropriate. For example, this line has been indented three times with ^T, where shiftwidth is 4. The line should start with a tabstop, followed by 4 spaces. Regarding to the layout rule, many people think that it's a horror from a sound syntax lover's point of view. Some years ago, when I wrote a Haskell parser for fun, I shared this opinion. However, although the layout rule is a nightmare to implement, it makes also Haskell programs not only easy to read, but sometimes to look even beautyful (wrt to programs in other languages). Bye, Kili ps: apropos beauty of programs: does anyone here ever heared of the language called "J"? -- Nunja! Wenn man erst einmal anfängt zu denken, dann ist es wie eine Sucht. Man kommt nicht mehr los davon. [WoKo in dag°, 28.11.2000]