\t saves bytes compared to n*' '. there is literally no other reason to do this. for 'style' both can be implemented to do the same and most editors these days

\t saves bytes compared to n*' '. there is literally no other reason to do this. for 'style' both can be implemented to do the same and most editors these days can replace one with the other and have configurable tabs, or 'use spaces instead of tabs' options. in reality, if for example you sent a lot of documents over the wire, or store a lot of documents on disk, using /t compared to spaces can save a lot of bytes on disk or network... (looking at the uncompressed case...)