Redefine tab as 4 spaces

Question

My current setting assumes 8 spaces  how could I redefine it

User · Answer

Add line set ts 4 in    vimrc file for per user or   etc vimrc file for system wide

User · Answer

There are few settings which define whether to use spaces or tabs   So here are handy functions which can be defined in your    vimrc file   function  UseTabs     set tabstop 4       Size of a hard tabstop  ts     set shiftwidth 4    Size of an indentation  sw     set noexpandtab     Always uses tabs instead of space characters  noet     set autoindent      Copy indent from current line when starting a new line  ai   endfunction  function  UseSpaces     set tabstop 2       Size of a hard tabstop  ts     set shiftwidth 2    Size of an indentation  sw     set expandtab       Always uses spaces instead of tab characters  et     set softtabstop 0   Number of spaces a  lt Tab gt  counts for  When 0  featuer is off  sts     set autoindent      Copy indent from current line when starting a new line    set smarttab        Inserts blanks on a  lt Tab gt  key  as per sw  ts and sts   endfunction   Usage    call UseTabs    call UseSpaces     To use it per file extensions  the following syntax can be used  added to  vimrc    au  BufWrite FileWritePre   module   install call UseSpaces     See also  Converting tabs to spaces     Here is another snippet from Wikia which can be used to toggle between tabs and spaces     virtual tabstops using spaces set shiftwidth 4 set softtabstop 4 set expandtab   allow toggling between local and default mode function TabToggle     if  amp expandtab     set shiftwidth 8     set softtabstop 0     set noexpandtab   else     set shiftwidth 4     set softtabstop 4     set expandtab   endif endfunction nmap  lt F9 gt  mz execute TabToggle   lt CR gt  z   It enables using 4 spaces for every tab and a mapping to F9 to toggle the settings

User · Answer

One more thing  use  retab to convert existing tab to spaces http   vim wikia com wiki Converting tabs to spaces

User · Answer

To define this on a permanent basis for the current user  create  or edit  the  vimrc file     vim    vimrc   Then  paste the configuration below into the file  Once vim is restarted  the tab settings will apply   set tabstop 4         The width of a TAB is set to 4                        Still it is a  t  It is just that                       Vim will interpret it to be having                       a width of 4   set shiftwidth 4      Indents will have a width of 4  set softtabstop 4     Sets the number of columns for a TAB  set expandtab         Expand TABs to spaces

User · Answer

Make sure vartabstop is unset set vartabstop   Set tabstop to 4 set tabstop 4

User · Answer

My basic    vimrc with comment   set number   show line number                                                                                            set tabstop 2   set display width of tab  1 tab   x space with                                                            set expandtab   transform tab to x space  x is tabstop                                                                 set autoindent   auto indent  new line with number of space at the beginning same as previous                                                                       set shiftwidth 2   number of space append to lines when type  gt  gt

User · Answer

Permanent for all users  when you alone on server     echo  quot set tabstop 4 quot   gt  gt   etc vim vimrc  Appends the setting in the config file  Normally on new server apt-get purge nano mc and all other to save your time  Otherwise  you will redefine editor in git  crontab etc

User · Answer

set sw 4   See Mastering the VI editor

User · Answer

It depends on what you mean  Do you want actual tab characters in your file to appear 4 spaces wide  or by  tab  do you actually mean an indent  generated by pressing the tab key  which would result in the file literally containing  up to  4 space characters for each  tab  you type   Depending on your answer  one of the following sets of settings should work for you    For tab characters that appear 4-spaces-wide   set tabstop 4   If you re using actual tab character in your source code you probably also want these settings  these are actually the defaults  but you may want to set them defensively    set softtabstop 0 noexpandtab   Finally  if you want an indent to correspond to a single tab  you should also use   set shiftwidth 4  For indents that consist of 4 space characters but are entered with the tab key   set tabstop 8 softtabstop 0 expandtab shiftwidth 4 smarttab    To make the above settings permanent add these lines to your vimrc   In case you need to make adjustments  or would simply like to understand what these options all mean  here s a breakdown of what each option means      tabstop      The width of a hard tabstop measured in  spaces  -- effectively the  maximum  width of an actual tab character       shiftwidth      The size of an  indent   It s also measured in spaces  so if your code base indents with tab characters then you want shiftwidth to equal the number of tab characters times tabstop  This is also used by things like the     gt  and  lt  commands       softtabstop      Setting this to a non-zero value other than tabstop will make the tab key  in insert mode     insert a combination of spaces  and possibly tabs  to simulate tab stops at this width       expandtab      Enabling this will make the tab key  in insert mode  insert spaces instead of    tab characters  This also affects the behavior of the retab command       smarttab      Enabling this will make the tab key  in insert mode  insert spaces or tabs to   go to the next indent   of the next tabstop when the cursor is at the beginning of a line  i e  the   only preceding characters are whitespace     For more details on any of these see  help  optionname  in vim  e g   help  tabstop

User · Answer

I copied and pasted this into my  vimrc file     size of a hard tabstop set tabstop 4    always uses spaces instead of tab characters set expandtab    size of an  indent  set shiftwidth 4   The first 2 settings mean that when I press Tab I get 4 spaces  The third setting means that when I do V gt   i e  visual and indent  I also get 4 spaces   Not as comprehensive as the accepted answer but it might help people who just want something to copy and paste

User · Answer

or shorthand for vim modeline   vim  set ts 4 sw 4 sts 4 et

User · Answer

Put your desired settings in the    vimrc file -- See below for some guidelines and best practices   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   Note  Setting  tabstop  to any other value than 8 can make your file appear wrong in many places  e g   when printing it   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  ischanged    Source    vimdoc sourceforge net htmldoc options html  tabstop   help tabstop

[vim] Redefine tab as 4 spaces

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