Tab key == 4 spaces and auto-indent after curly braces in Vim

Question

How do I make vi-Vim never use tabs (converting spaces to tabs, bad!), makes the tab key == 4 spaces, and automatically indent code after curly brace blocks like Emacs does?

Answer 1

edit your ~/.vimrc

$ vim ~/.vimrc

add following lines :

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

Answer 2

Firstly, do not use the Tab key in Vim for manual indentation. Vim has a pair of commands in insert mode for manually increasing or decreasing the indentation amount. Those commands are Ctrl-T and Ctrl-D. These commands observe the values of tabstop, shiftwidth and expandtab, and maintain the correct mixture of spaces and tabs (maximum number of tabs followed by any necessary number of spaces).

Secondly, these manual indenting keys don't have to be used very much anyway if you use automatic indentation.

If Ctrl-T instead of Tab bothers you, you can remap it:

:imap <Tab> ^T

You can also remap Shift-Tab to do the Ctrl-D deindent:

:imap <S-Tab> ^D

Here ^T and ^D are literal control characters that can be inserted as Ctrl-VCtrl-T.

With this mapping in place, you can still type literal Tab into the buffer using Ctrl-VTab. Note that if you do this, even if :set expandtab is on, you get an unexpanded tab character.

A similar effect to the <Tab> map is achieved using :set smarttab, which also causes backspace at the front of a line to behave smart.

In smarttab mode, when Tab is used not at the start of a line, it has no special meaning. That's different from my above mapping of Tab to Ctrl-T, because a Ctrl-T used anywhere in a line (in insert mode) will increase that line's indentation.

Other useful mappings may be:

:map <Tab> >
:map <S-Tab> <

Now we can do things like select some lines, and hit Tab to indent them over. Or hit Tab twice on a line (in command mode) to increase its indentation.

If you use the proper indentation management commands, then everything is controlled by the three parameters: shiftwidth, tabstop and expandtab.

The shiftwidth parameter controls your indentation size; if you want four space indents, use :set shiftwidth=4, or the abbreviation :set sw=4.

If only this is done, then indentation will be created using a mixture of spaces and tabs, because noexpandtab is the default. Use :set expandtab. This causes tab characters which you type into the buffer to expand into spaces, and for Vim-managed indentation to use only spaces.

When expandtab is on, and if you manage your indentation through all the proper Vim mechanisms, the value of tabstop becomes irrelevant. It controls how tabs appear if they happen to occur in the file. If you have set tabstop=8 expandtab and then sneak a hard tab into the file using Ctrl-VTab, it will produce an alignment to the next 8-column-based tab position, as usual.

Answer 3

As has been pointed out in a couple of answers below, the preferred method now is NOT to use smartindent, but instead use the following (in your .vimrc):

filetype plugin indent on
" show existing tab with 4 spaces width
set tabstop=4
" when indenting with '>', use 4 spaces width
set shiftwidth=4
" On pressing tab, insert 4 spaces
set expandtab

---

In your .vimrc: file:

set smartindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

The help files take a bit of time to get used to, but the more you read, the better Vim gets:

:help smartindent

Even better, you can embed these settings in your source for portability:

:help auto-setting

To see your current settings:

:set all

As graywh points out in the comments, smartindent has been replaced by cindent which "Works more cleverly", although still mainly for languages with C-like syntax:

:help C-indenting

Answer 4

Afterall, you could edit the .vimrc,then add the conf

set tabstop=4

Or exec the command

Answer 5

Related, if you open a file that uses both tabs and spaces, assuming you've got

set expandtab ts=4 sw=4 ai

You can replace all the tabs with spaces in the entire file with

:%retab

Answer 6

To have 4-space tabs in most files, real 8-wide tab char in Makefiles, and automatic indenting in various files including C/C++, put this in your ~/.vimrc file:

" Only do this part when compiled with support for autocommands.
if has("autocmd")
    " Use filetype detection and file-based automatic indenting.
    filetype plugin indent on

    " Use actual tab chars in Makefiles.
    autocmd FileType make set tabstop=8 shiftwidth=8 softtabstop=0 noexpandtab
endif

" For everything else, use a tab width of 4 space chars.
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.