Re: [PATCH] stripspace: Call U+0020 a "space" instead of a "blank"

[Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>]

2016-02-09 16:00 GMT-07:00 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>:
> Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 2:24 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>> Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> I couldn't find any other examples of people referring to this character
>>>> as a "blank".
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
>>>> ---
>>>
>>> Any comments on this from anybody other than the author that I
>>> missed to support this change?
>>
>> I remember "blank" being used in my early days of computing.
>>
>> The blank was somehow more accurate as it described the exact
>> thing (i.e. char U+0020 as commonly produced via the space bar
>> on the key board)
>>
>> A space however could refer to any kind of indentation.
>>  * tabs would qualify for that
>>  * other tricks of your (wordprocessor-) editor would qualify for that
>>    (indent by 2 inches in footer section or other weeirdness)
>>  * any other character not using any ink in a printer[1]
>>
>> [1] https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars/spaces.html
>>
>> Looking at that table in there, U+0020 is officially called "space",
>> so I guess the patch is technically correct.
>
> So the "blank" is correct because we just want a gap between the
> comment char and the text, and use of " " is merely an
> implementation detail.  The "space" is correct because that happens
> to be the byte used as the implementation detail of leaving that gap
> between the comment char and the text.
>
> ;-)

"blank" does not sound like good English to me, but there are a lot of
dialects of English, so I can understand if it sounds natural to
someone else.

-Alex