In message <opsczud0fh823vku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:14:14 -0400,
"graydon hoare" <graydon@xxxxxxxxx> said:
graydon> eh, actually, I would prefer to:
graydon>
graydon> - stick with one space
graydon> - change the regex to handle files with leading whitespace in names
So let's see if I get you right, you're saying that you want one
insignificant space followed by a number (0 or more) spaces,
potentially looking exactly the same as that first insignificant one.
I don't know how else to say this: from a technical point of view,
fine. From a usability and user interface point of view, I find that
to be a horrible idea, riddled with confusion and error prone as a
result. Just look at the confusion it has created already. Let's not
forget that as much hackers as we may be, we're also human, and there
will always be a number of confused people who will get the space
count wrong, thus increasing the number of user support calls/emails,
potentially becoming a FAQ that very gently says "you didn't count
your spaces correctly, dummy!"
The existence of tabs will not make matters better, trust me. I
noticed that you do span over [^[:space:]] to find non-space stuff,
while you use an actual space to match the delimiter itself. This
means that while you allow a tab to act as a delimiter, you will then
refuse to accept the tab as a delimiter.
I suggest that it should be possible to enclose a file name with
quotes (single or double, I don't care), for the sake of clarity.
Or have a completely different delimiter than space. I've no idea
what syntax you're imagining that basic_io.cc would handle...
Cheers,
Richard
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