How do I change tab size in Vim

Question

Every time I add a selector in CSS and I press Enter to define the properties it ends up like this      selector           property  value       8-space tabs   How can I configure Vim to make it like this    selector       property  value       4-space tabs

User · Answer

set tabstop 4  set shiftwidth 4  set expandtab   This will insert four spaces instead of a tab character  Spaces are a bit more    stable     meaning that text indented with spaces will show up the same in the browser and any other application

User · Answer

Expanding on zoul s answer  If you want to setup Vim to use specific settings when editing a particular filetype  you ll want to use autocommands  autocmd Filetype css setlocal tabstop 4  This will make it so that tabs are displayed as 4 spaces  Setting expandtab will cause Vim to actually insert spaces  the number of them being controlled by tabstop  when you press tab  you might want to use softtabstop to make backspace work properly  that is  reduce indentation when that s what would happen should tabs be used  rather than always delete one char at a time   To make a fully educated decision as to how to set things up  you ll need to read Vim docs on tabstop  shiftwidth  softtabstop and expandtab  The most interesting bit is found under expandtab   help  expandtab    There are four main ways to use tabs in Vim   Always keep  tabstop  at 8  set  softtabstop  and  shiftwidth  to 4  or 3 or whatever you prefer  and use  noexpandtab    Then Vim will use a mix of tabs and spaces  but typing  and  will behave like a tab appears every 4  or 3  characters   Set  tabstop  and  shiftwidth  to whatever you prefer and use  expandtab    This way you will always insert spaces   The formatting will never be messed up when  tabstop  is changed   Set  tabstop  and  shiftwidth  to whatever you prefer and use a  modeline  to set these values when editing the file again   Only works when using Vim to edit the file   Always set  tabstop  and  shiftwidth  to the same value  and  noexpandtab    This should then work  for initial indents only  for any tabstop setting that people use   It might be nice to have tabs after the first non-blank inserted as spaces if you do this though   Otherwise aligned comments will be wrong when  tabstop  is changed

User · Answer

To make the change for one session  use this command     set tabstop 4   To make the change permanent  add it to    vimrc or    vim vimrc    set tabstop 4   This will affect all files  not just css   To only affect css files    autocmd Filetype css setlocal tabstop 4   as stated in Michal s answer

User · Answer

UPDATE  If you are working in a particular project I highly recommend using editorconfig   It lets you define an  editorconfig file at the root of your repository defining the indentation you want to use for each file type across your repository   For example   root   true     css  charset   utf-8 indent style   space indent size   4     js  charset   utf-8 indent style   space indent size   2   There is a vim plugin that automatically configures vim according to the config file for file you open   On top of that the  editorconfig file is automatically supported on many other IDEs and editors so it is the best option for collaborating between users with different environments   ORIGINAL ANSWER  If you need to change sizes often and you don t want to bind this to a specific file type you can have predefined commands on your  vimrc file to quickly switch preferences   nmap  lt leader gt t  set expandtab tabstop 4 shiftwidth 4 softtabstop 4 lt CR gt  nmap  lt leader gt m  set expandtab tabstop 2 shiftwidth 2 softtabstop 2 lt CR gt    This maps two different sets of sizes to keys  t and  m  You can rebind this to whatever keys you want

User · Answer

Several of the answers on this page are  single use  fixes to the described problem  Meaning  the next time you open a document with vim  the previous tab settings will return    If anyone is interested in permanently changing the tab settings    find open your  vimrc - instructions here add the following lines     more info here     set tabstop 4  set shiftwidth 4  set expandtab   then save file and test

User · Answer

As a one-liner into vim   set tabstop 4 shiftwidth 4  For permanent setup  add these lines to    vimrc  set tabstop 4 set shiftwidth 4  NOTE  Add set expandtab if you prefer 4-spaces indentation  instead of a tab indentation

[vim] How do I change tab size in Vim?

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