CSC 209: Tabs are eight spaces

A tab character represents spacing to the next multiple of 8 spaces. Your editor might have a command (or menu item) which says to change what the "tab stops" are. You should not use this command. Because it affects only your own viewing experience, not everyone else's. If you use a different editor, if you use the same editor from a different account or on a different computer, if you display the file with "cat" or print it on paper, it will be presented with 8-character tab stops.

If your editor has an option to use a different number of spaces when you press the tab key, this is not a problem, so long as when your editor writes out the file, it uses tabs to represent 8-character tab stops only. (E.g. some such editors don't write out tab characters on output at all; the tab key is just used as a handy data entry method in the editor, and all output to the file uses appropriate numbers of spaces.)