Spaces as tabs and backspace behavior in Vim

Question

In my .vimrc I have:

set shiftwidth=4
set tabstop=4
set expandtab

set to use 4 spaces instead of tab when I hit the Tab button. But when I hit

Answer 1

You can try using ^T and ^D.

:help i_CTRL-T
:help i_CTRL-D

These allow to insert or delete (more like backspace though) a number of spaces equal to shiftwidth.

Answer 2

Try set softtabstop=4

Answer 3

I have the same problem with you earlier, but I soon find it do not make any sense to just backspace 1 character in real coding. but if you really want backspace 1 character, you can just type one more space, then you can delete only one character each time you hit space bar even if you got where there you typed the 4 spaces tab