Abstract#R##N##R##N#How expensive is it for a compiler to process horizontal tab characters introduced arbitrarily into program text? The measurements discussed in this note show that if tabs are uniformly expanded by the source text input module of the compiler, the process of reading and tokenizing the source program is slowed by about 20 per cent. This overhead can be completely eliminated by using an ‘extra space count’ in the lexical analyser instead of a uniform expansion.
['William M. Waite']
Treatment of tab characters by a compiler