Redefine tab as 4 spaces

Asked 10/12, 2009 at 6:18 Answered 3/3 at 18:25

1335

My current setting assumes 8 spaces; how could I redefine it?

Dunedin answered 10/12, 2009 at 6:18 Comment(5)

Better yet, set it to four spaces and enable auto-indent at the same time: Auto-indent with tabwidth set to 4 spaces – Poynter 11/9, 2013 at 1:55

@heinrich5991 I don't get it. I don't need 8 spaces to realize that a line is indented, and more than necessary means limiting the characters you can view on a long line of text (at least before wrapping). But to each his own. :) – Beaumont 20/4, 2014 at 11:25

@heinrich5991 My argument is "use as little as possible to readily identify an indented line". By my estimation, one's ability to easily identify an indentation drops off rapidly at < 3 spaces, and it stops increasing at 4 spaces. Therefore, indentation that exceeds 4 spaces is a waste, in my experience. – Beaumont 21/4, 2014 at 13:40

@Beaumont Couldn't possibly agree more, mate. Which is why I feel so damn claustrophobic reading Ruby or "modern-day JavaScript", each of which use 2-spaces for indentation. It legitimately gives me eye strain when trying to follow heavily-nested structures. Hard tabs for the goddamn win. – Wilmerwilmette 13/11, 2015 at 6:57

Possible duplicate of Replace Tab with Spaces in VIM – Lethargic 28/3, 2016 at 20:13

1949

It depends on what you mean. Do you mean:

you want tab characters in your file to appear 4 character cells wide?
you want the tab key to generate an indent consisting of 4 space characters

Depending on which behavior you need, one of the following sets of settings should work:

If you want tab characters in your file to appear 4 character cells wide:

set tabstop=4

If your code requires use of actual tab characters these settings prevent unintentional insertion of spaces (these are the defaults, but you may want to set them defensively):

set softtabstop=0 noexpandtab

If you also want to use tabs for indentation, you should also set shiftwidth to be the same as tabstop:

set shiftwidth=4

To make any of these settings permanent add them to your vimrc.

If you want pressing the `tab` key to indent with 4 space characters:

First, tell vim to use 4-space indents, and to intelligently use the tab key for indentation instead of for inserting tab characters (when at the beginning of a line):

set shiftwidth=4 smarttab

If you'd also like vim to only use space caharacters, never tab characters:

set expandtab

Finally, I also recommend setting tab stops to be different from the indentation width, in order to reduce the chance of tab characters masquerading as proper indents:

set tabstop=8 softtabstop=0

To make any of these settings permanent add them to your vimrc.

More Details

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 =, > and < 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 further details on any of these see :help 'optionname' in vim (e.g. :help 'tabstop')

Lavona answered 10/12, 2009 at 6:19 Comment(19)

It is also important to ensure that Makefiles always use hard tab characters, otherwise builds will fail! I have shown how to, at #235064 – Idle 24/1, 2014 at 2:48

@SethMcClaine mine is in /etc/vim/vimrc. – Splash 23/5, 2014 at 9:21

Vim users take note of the set softtabstop=4 feature! I am tired of trying to read your code with less, or any other editor except vim, only to see wacky indenting because you redefined tab to be some arbitrary number of spaces (even though the rest of the system thinks otherwise)! :-) – Kikuyu 17/9, 2014 at 12:51

@OgrePsalm33 Personally, I always have tabstop=8 and expandtab enabled when editing code. Not everyone feels that way, however. There are some who feel an indent should be a single tab character, so the width is adjustable by the reader. I don't think these people are exclusively (or even mostly) vim users... – Lavona 7/10, 2014 at 0:42

@KrishnadasPC set ts=4's great except if you ever work with (a) anybody who hasn't reconfigured everything they use that displays text, and (b) anybody else who works with (a) people. – Ectoplasm 10/10, 2015 at 19:57

Setting tabstop with noexpandtab and softtabstop=0 doesn't actually set the size of a tabstop on my OS X Macvim, if that means the number of screen spaces generated by a tab character. Instead, it sets the tabstop column. The difference can be seen by starting a line with a few characters (less than value of tabstop) and then a tab character. The cursor will jump to the tab stop. So the number of screen spaces inserted is a few characters less than the value of tabstop. – Inquest 9/3, 2016 at 22:43

@Inquest Yes, "the size of a tabstop" refers to the tabstop columns. In reality it is the maximum number of space characters a tab character will be as wide as. Vim's own documentation uses similar wording, BTW. For example, :help 'tabstop' descibes the option as the "Number of spaces that a <Tab> in the file counts for". – Lavona 23/3, 2016 at 6:34

Thanks, Laurence. Actually, the help text you refer to ("Number of spaces that a <Tab> in the file counts for") was what threw me. It is apparently incorrect, then. – Inquest 24/3, 2016 at 17:22

What's the difference between a "tab" and an "indent"? – Airflow 12/4, 2016 at 22:14

@NikoBellic A tab is ASCII/Unicode character number 9, aka "Control-I". This is the character that is normally inserted when you hit the tab key. An indent is the spacing used at the beginning of lines, in code usually used to indicate block structure. Some coding conventions use tabs for indents (usually 1 tab = 1 indent), but many use space characters rather than tabs (4 spaces seems to be most common, but 2 spaces is also fairly popular). – Lavona 12/4, 2016 at 22:51

@NikoBellic I should also add that in vim, at least, tab characters are unusual because they may have variable width (depending on settings). In the default settings, a single tab character appears like one or more spaces up to the next "tab stop" (which is normally every 8 spaces). The tabstop option mentioned in the answer adjusts this. The (terribly named) list and listchars options can also affect how tabs are rendered. – Lavona 12/4, 2016 at 22:55

@LaurenceGonsalves Thanks. So if I wanted to indent with two tabs, I could set tabstop to 4 (which causes each tab character to be displayed visually as a maximum of 4 "spaces") and set shiftwidth to twice that, a.k.a. 8. Right? And if I'd rather my indent be one tab, as is most common, I would set shiftwidth to be idential to tabstop, a.k.a. 4. – Airflow 12/4, 2016 at 23:31

Can someone help me understand why this answer says to use tabstop=8 for indents that consist of 4 spaces? I couldn't get the reason after reading the descriptions of the various settings. Another answer says to use tabstop=4 which makes a little bit more sense to me. – Thermostatics 16/1, 2019 at 1:9

@KodosJohnson The tabstop option controls the width of a hard tab character. If you want your indents to consist of 4 space characters, rather than single tab characters that are 4-wide, then the width of your tab character doesn't matter -- sort of. In practice, you probably want your tab character width to be different from the width of your indents, in order to reduce the chance of tab characters masquerading as proper indents. (list + expandtab can help here too) Also, 8-char-wide tabs is "the standard" -- your terminal, Python, and many other tools default to 8-char-wide-tabs. – Lavona 16/1, 2019 at 21:4

Thanks for the tabstop explanation, it also didn't make any sense to me. But to catch tab characters in place of spaces, e.g. inserted with another editor, I would think a number not divisible by 4 would be easiert to spot. So I'll try tabstop=6 for now. – Dactylology 12/4, 2019 at 9:52

@Dactylology If you want to be able to spot accidental tab characters, you may find the 'list' and 'listchars' option useful. Something like set list listchars+=ltab:▶┈ will make tabs look different from spaces. You can use the SpecialKey highlight group to adjust the appearance further. Another trick which really makes them stand out is to do something like :2match Error /\t/. – Lavona 17/5, 2019 at 23:59

I just noticed a typo in my previous comment, but SO won't let me edit it. The correct listchars line is: :set list listchars+=tab:▶┈ ("tab", not "ltab") – Lavona 21/6, 2019 at 17:38

what is the difference between a "hard tabstop" and an "indent"? – Impracticable 12/1 at 11:17

@Impracticable the exact same question was asked Apr 12, 2016. Scroll up to that comment and there's an answer below it. – Lavona 13/1 at 5:21

821

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

Nitza answered 10/12, 2009 at 6:20 Comment(3)

If you do not have ~/.vimrc, try with /etc/vim/vimrc. In my case on Ubuntu 16.04 the config file is there. But keep in mind that changing this file will cause the configuration to be used globaly. – Besought 11/10, 2016 at 7:43

One more thing, use :retab to convert existing tab to spaces. vim.wikia.com/wiki/Converting_tabs_to_spaces – Blowtube 10/11, 2016 at 14:39

@TodorTodorov It is ok and usually conducted to create one ~/.vimrc. – Sanctified 25/6, 2021 at 18:9

or shorthand for vim modeline:

vim :set ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 et :

Corymb answered 10/12, 2009 at 6:22 Comment(3)

I like this because in the CKAD exam, there's not much time to set options. Why is there s : at the end or is it a typo? – Marilee 17/3, 2023 at 17:52

The colon is valid but not mandatory. See the 2nd form in :help modeline. – Guesswork 22/6, 2023 at 18:15

... Although maybe the 2nd form doesn't work in Vim 8+ ... ? (I came back too late to edit my prior comment.) – Guesswork 22/6, 2023 at 18:23

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 <Tab> 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 <Tab> 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 &expandtab
    set shiftwidth=8
    set softtabstop=0
    set noexpandtab
  else
    set shiftwidth=4
    set softtabstop=4
    set expandtab
  endif
endfunction
nmap <F9> mz:execute TabToggle()<CR>'z

It enables using 4 spaces for every tab and a mapping to F9 to toggle the settings.

Angling answered 22/1, 2018 at 21:37 Comment(1)

I do not get the "au!" line : seems to say to start using UseSpaces only when saving a buffer with those extensions? not when opening them? – Pleuropneumonia 25/1, 2022 at 15:12

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> (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.

Annal answered 28/6, 2013 at 10:49 Comment(0)

One more thing, use
:retab
to convert existing tab to spaces http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Converting_tabs_to_spaces

Blowtube answered 10/11, 2016 at 14:40 Comment(0)

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

Gwynethgwynne answered 7/5, 2014 at 1:45 Comment(2)

+1 for explaining why setting tabstop != 8 can be bad! – Kikuyu 2/10, 2014 at 13:9

This is great, but you should note that this is verbatim from vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'tabstop' or :help tabstop in vim. – Circuitous 13/1, 2016 at 2:47

Add line
set ts=4
in
~/.vimrc file for per user
or
/etc/vimrc file for system wide

Baalbek answered 19/7, 2016 at 14:12 Comment(0)

:set sw=4

See Mastering the VI editor

Blinnie answered 10/12, 2009 at 6:21 Comment(0)

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 >>

Tooley answered 25/8, 2019 at 14:7 Comment(1)

great! the autoindent introduces double indentation when copy pasting text that already has indents. bit of caution. paste/nopaste mode might help in such cases – Busybody 21/9, 2020 at 14:6

Permanent for all users (when you alone on server):

# echo "set tabstop=4" >> /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.

Encumbrance answered 27/2, 2020 at 18:38 Comment(2)

If you set EDITOR, most programs will respect it. – Dowager 29/2, 2020 at 16:18

@D.BenKnoble you are right. i've tried. for now i prefer to save my time and nerves. can't check what exactly runs with F10 in nano but i always do some tricks with save (maybe F10 is a solution). or it doesn't work in screen? I can't remember, just hate it) – Encumbrance 1/3, 2020 at 14:54

Make sure vartabstop is unset

set vartabstop=

Set tabstop to 4

set tabstop=4

Current answered 29/1, 2021 at 16:26 Comment(0)

For permanent change, create the file ~/.vim/plugin/tab_expander.vim with the content

set tabstop=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab shiftwidth=4 smarttab

To prevent touching the ~/.vimrc, thus keeping other default settings untouched.

Harpole answered 26/1, 2023 at 14:12 Comment(0)

for any one new to neovim, if you are wondering how to replicate this configurations in lua, you do it this way:

set tabstop = 4 -> vim.opt.tabstop = 4

set expandtab -> vim.opt.expandtab = true

set shiftwidth = 4 smarttab ->

   vim.opt.shiftwidth = 4 
   vim.opt.smarttab = true

Selfabsorption answered 3/3 at 18:25 Comment(0)

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If you want tab characters in your file to appear 4 character cells wide:

If you want pressing the `tab` key to indent with 4 space characters:

More Details

`tabstop`

`shiftwidth`

`softtabstop`

`expandtab`

`smarttab`

Recommended topics

Hot tags

If you want tab characters in your file to appear 4 character cells wide:

If you want pressing the tab key to indent with 4 space characters:

More Details

tabstop

shiftwidth

softtabstop

expandtab

smarttab

Recommended topics

Hot tags

If you want pressing the `tab` key to indent with 4 space characters:

`tabstop`

`shiftwidth`

`softtabstop`

`expandtab`

`smarttab`