inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation

Question

I m trying to create an application in Python 3 2 and I use tabs all the time for indentation  but even the editor changes some of them into spaces and then print out  inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation  when I try to run the program   How can I change the spaces into tabs  It s driving me crazy   I m a beginner in programming   I would be glad if I could get some overall tips on my code  if I have done a lot of mistakes I would be happy to hear   import random  attraktioner     frittfall   bergodalbana   sp  khuset     class Nojesfalt      def   init   self  attraktion           self val   attraktion         self langd   0         self alder   0    l  ngdgr  ns f  r fritt fall     def langdgrans self           print             self langd   int input  Hur l  ng   r du i cm              if self langd  lt  140              print  tyv  rr  du   r f  r kort  prova n  got annat               return 0         elif self langd  gt   140              print  h  ll dig hatten  nu   ker vi                print                  return 1     ldersgr  ns f  r sp  khuset     def aldersgrans self           print             self alder   int input  Hur gammal   r du              if self alder  lt  10              print  tyv  rr  du   r f  r ung  prova n  got annat               return 0         elif self alder  gt   10              print  G   in om du t  rs                print                  return 1      ker attraktion frittfall lr bergodalbana         def aka self                   print             print self val          tal   random randint 0 100          if tal  lt  20              print    kturen gick   t skogen  b  ttre lycka n  sta g  ng           elif tal  gt   20              print  jabbadabbbadoooooooo               return 1   g  r i sp  khuset         def aka1 self                   print             print self val          tal   random randint 0 100          if tal  lt  20              print  du   r omringad av sp  ken och kan inte forts  tta              return 0         elif tal  gt   20              print  Buhuuuuuu  buuuhuuuu               return 1   programkod print  V  lkommen till n  jesf  ltet  vad vill du g  ra    print       while 1      vald attr   input  Vad vill du g  ra  n1  frittfall n2  bergodalbana n3  sp  khuset n4  Avsluta n       if vald attr     1           val   Nojesfalt attraktioner 0           if val langdgrans      1              val aka       elif vald attr     2           val   Nojesfalt attraktioner 1           val aka       elif vald attr     3           val   Nojesfalt attraktioner 2           if val aldersgrans      1              val aka1       elif vald attr     4           break

User · Answer

It is possible to solve this problem using notepad++ by replacing Tabs with 4 Spaces:

Choose Search -> Find... or press Ctrl + F
Select the Replace tab
In the box named Search Mode choose Extended(\n, \r, \t, \0, \x...)
In the field Find what : write \t
In the field Replace with : press Space 4 times. Be sure that there is nothing else in this field.
Click on the button Replace All

User · Answer

If you are using Sublime Text for Python development  you can avoid the error by using the package Anaconda  After installing Anaconda  open your file in Sublime Text  right click on the open spaces   choose Anaconda   click on autoformat  Done  Or press Ctrl   Alt   R

User · Answer

Using the autopep8 command below fixed it for me    autopep8 -i my file py   Documentation for autopep8 linked here

User · Answer

For VSCode users  Ctrl Shift P or View- gt Command Palette   Type   gt Convert Indentation to Spaces  press Enter

User · Answer

SOULUTION FOR SUBLIME TEXT My Solution to this problem was to open it in idle editor and then idle editor will uncover your problem e g SUBLIME TEXT while run       clock tick 27           milli   clock tick       seconds   milli 1000     timeForLevel    seconds     print timeForLevel        IDLE EDITOR while run       clock tick 27              milli   clock tick       seconds   milli 1000     timeForLevel    seconds     print timeForLevel   I am not saying that you should only use idle editor  I m saying that if you get that error you should check idle editor

User · Answer

I oddly ran into a similar issue with one of my  py files  I simply opened the file in Pycharm and pressed Option Command L which correctly formats the file contents in one go    I suspect I was having trouble because I coded this particular  py file through jupyter labs as opposed to my usual choice of sublime text or Pycharm and therefore ran into some hidden indentation issues many answers here have alluded to

User · Answer

Don t use tabs    Set your editor to use 4 spaces for indentation  Make a search and replace to replace all tabs with 4 spaces  Make sure your editor is set to display tabs as 8 spaces    Note  The reason for 8 spaces for tabs is so that you immediately notice when tabs have been inserted unintentionally - such as when copying and pasting from example code that uses tabs instead of spaces

User · Answer

Sometimes  tab does mess up while indenting  One way is to obviously use the tab and backspace to correctly indent the code   Another way is to use space 4 times  depending on how much you want to indent    A weird way that worked for me when nothing else worked  whichever line I getting the error  I backspaced that line to the previous line and then pressed enter  It automatically indented the line to correct position and I was not getting any error after that    Hopefully  this should help

User · Answer

I use Notepad   and got this error   In Notepad   you will see that both the tab and the four spaces are the same  but when you copy your code to Python IDLE you would see the difference and the line with a tab would have more space before it than the others   To solve the problem  I just deleted the tab before the line then added four spaces

User · Answer

Sublime Text 3  In Sublime Text  WHILE editing a Python file   Sublime Text menu   Preferences   Settings - Syntax Specific    Python sublime-settings         tab size   4       translate tabs to spaces   true

User · Answer

Generally  people prefer indenting with space  It s more consistent across editors  resulting in fewer mismatches of this sort  However  you are allowed to indent with tab  It s your choice  however  you should be aware that the standard of 8 spaces per tab is a bit wide   Concerning your issue  most probably  your editor messed up  To convert tab to space is really editor-dependent   On Emacs  for example  you can call the method  untabify    On command line  you can use a sed line  adapt the number of spaces to whatever pleases you       sed -e  s  t            lt  yourFile py  gt  yourNedFile py

User · Answer

Try deleting the indents and then systematically either pressing tab or pressing space 4 times   This usually happens to me when I have an indent using the tab key and then use the space key in the next line

User · Answer

Well I had the same problem and I realised that the problem is that I copied code from another python editor to sublime   I was working with jupyter notebook and then I copied the code into sublime  Apparently when you make specific modifications  like moving code in functions  then indentation gets messy and this is where the problem comes from    So just stick to one editor  If you do so  then you will be having no problem

User · Answer

With the IDLE editor you can use this    Menu Edit   Select All Menu Format   Untabify Region Assuming your editor has replaced 8 spaces with a tab  enter 8 into the input box  Hit select  and it fixes the entire document

User · Answer

When using the sublime text editor  I was able to select the segment of my code that was giving me the inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation error and select    view  gt  indentation  gt  convert indentation to spaces  which resolved the issue for me

User · Answer

If you use ATOM   Go to Menu  Packages --  WhiteSpace --  Convert all Tabs to Spaces

User · Answer

If your editor doesn t recognize tabs when doing a search and replace  like SciTE   you can paste the code into Word and search using Ctr-H and  t which finds the tabs which then can be replace with 4 spaces

User · Answer

I recently had the same problem and found out that I just needed to convert the  py file s charset to UTF-8 as that s the set Python 3 uses    BTW  I used 4-space tabs all the time  so the problem wasn t caused by them

User · Answer

Your problem is due to your editor limitations configuration  Some editors provide you of tools to help with the problem by    Converting tabs into spaces  For example  if you are using Stani s Python editor you can configure it to do it on saving  Converting spaces into tabs   If you are using ActiveState Komodo you have a tool to  tabify  your code  As others already pointed  this is not a good idea   Eclipse s Pydev provides functions  Convert tabs to space-tabs  and  Convert space-tabs to tabs

User · Answer

Use pylint it will give you a detailed report about how many spaces you need and where

User · Answer

The following trick has worked for me   Copy and paste the code in the notepad  Then from the notepad again select all and copy the code Paste in my views py Select all the newly pasted code in the views py and remove all the tabs by pressing shift tab from the keyboard Now use the tab key again to use the proper indentation

User · Answer

I had the same error  I had to add several code lines to an existing   py file  In Notepad   it did not work   After adding the code lines and saving  I got the same error  When I opened the same file in PyCharm and added the lines  the error disappeared

User · Answer

I had the same problem and fix it using following python script  hope it help others   it is because of using tabs and spaces for indenting code  in this script I replace each tab with four spaces       input file    source code path here     e g  source py output file    out put file path here     e g out py with open input file   r   as source      with open output file   a    as result          for line in source              line   line replace   t                       result write line    if you use sublime or any other editor which gives you the tool to replace text you can replace all tabs by four spaces from editor

User · Answer

Solving this using Vim editor   Open terminal  Ctrl   Alt   T   Go to the directory where the file is located  cd  lt path to your directory gt    Ex  cd  home vineeshvs work  Open the file in Vim  vim  lt file name gt    Ex  vim myfile txt    Optional step  Enable search keyword highlighting in Vim  ESC  set hlsearch  Go to the line where you have this problem  ESC   lt line number gt    Ex   53 in Vim editor after pressing ESC button once  Replace tabs using the required number of spaces in Vim      s  t  lt give as many spaces as you want to replace tab gt  gc   Ex  Tab will be replaced with four spaces using the following command      s  t      gc after pressing ESC  button once   This process is interactive   You may give y to replace the tab with spaces and n to skip a particular replacement  Press ESC when you are done with  the required replacements

User · Answer

I got the same errors but could not figure out what I was doing wrong    So I fixed it by running auto-indent on my code and allowing the machine to fix my fault    If anyone is wondering how I did that   Simple   Go in vim   Type in G gg    This will automatically fix everything  Good luck

User · Answer

There was a duplicate of this question from here but I thought I would offer a view to do with modern editors and the vast array of features they offer  With python code  anything that needs to be intented in a  py file  needs to either all be intented using the tab key  or by spaces  Convention is to use four spaces for an indentation  Most editors have the ability to visually show on the editor whether the code is being indented with spaces or tabs  which helps greatly for debugging  For example  with atom  going to preferences and then editor you can see the following two options      Then if your code is using spaces  you will see small dots where your code is indented     And if it is indented using tabs  you will see something like this     Now if you noticed  you can see that when using tabs  there are more errors warnings on the left  this is because of something called pep8 pep8 documentation  which is basically a uniform style guide for python  so that all developers mostly code to the same standard and appearance  which helps when trying to understand other peoples code  it is in pep8 which favors the use of spaces to indent rather than tabs  And we can see the editor showing that there is a warning relating to pep8 warning code W191    I hope all the above helps you understand the nature of the problem you are having and how to prevent it in the future

User · Answer

What I did when the same error popped up  Select everything  Str   A  and press Shift   Tab  So nothing was indented anymore  Now go back to the lines you want to have indented  and put it back how you want it   It worked for me

[python] "inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation"

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