So what's the right indent: 2 or 4?

A principle you often see mentioned in a Perl context is TIMTOWTDI (pronounced "tim toady"), short for There Is More Than One Way To Do It. I think some take it too far on occasion, using it to justify alternates which are objectively meritless, while I believe it means 1) one should be tolerant of differences and maybe even learn from them, and 2) adjust to what's best based on context.

With that in mind, anything that might be claiming to be an official style guide is merely making suggestions. So while your answer is inherently unanswerable, I'll leave you with the following:

From what I've seen, 4-space indents is by far the most common indent used, so I recommend that you use this. You will also come across 4-position tabs and 2-space indents pretty often. I use something I haven't see anyone else use (for somewhat historical reasons), so I won't mention it.

There is one "rule": Be respectful of the conventions of projects to which you collaborate.

Seeking work! You can reach me at ikegami@adaelis.com

In reply to Re: Code style question by ikegami
in thread Code style question by AlexP

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.