A crazy idea for accurately tracking source position

[Alix Pexton via Digitalmars-d]

On 17/04/2014 8:20 PM, matovitch wrote:
> You are doing it all wrong. The easiest way to compute
> the col position is the following :
>
> col_pos = 0;
>
> if (non_tab_character_encounter)
>       col_pos++;
> else
>       col_pos += tab_length - col_pos % tab_length;
>
> That's it.


Tabs can have variable widths, with your technique the end only lines up 
with the desired column if tab_length matches the width of tabs being 
used to display the output, which is at best happenstance.

By constructing a string that matches the pattern of characters that 
precede the column exactly, everything lines up no matter how wide the 
display tabs are.

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