Modifying Indentation in Vim

Dimas Maulana Development

08-12-2020

Contents

Indentation settings are crucial for maintaining consistent and readable code. In Vim, you can easily modify indentation preferences using various commands. Here’s a breakdown of your provided commands and their effects:

Converting Tabs to Spaces

To replace tabs with spaces, follow these steps:

Set the tab width and shift width to 2 spaces:
```
:set tabstop=2
:set shiftwidth=2
```
Enable the expandtab option to replace tabs with spaces:
```
:set expandtab
```
Perform a retab to apply the changes:
```
:retab
```

Converting Spaces to Tabs

To change spaces to tabs, adhere to these instructions:

Adjust the tabstop to 8 to match your desired tab width:
```
:set tabstop=8
```
Disable expandtab to ensure tabs are used instead of spaces:
```
:set noexpandtab
```
Use the %retab! command to reformat the entire file using tabs:
```
:%retab!
```

Displaying Tab Characters and End of Line

For better visualization of tab characters and end-of-line markers, employ the following configuration:

Create a non-normal mode mapping to set the display preferences:

:nnoremap <leader>l :setlocal lcs=tab:>-,trail:-,eol:$ list! list?<CR>

Here, <leader> is a placeholder for your leader key (usually backslash), and <CR> represents the Enter key.

After setting up this mapping, you can press <leader>l in normal mode to toggle the display of tab characters, trailing spaces, and end-of-line markers in the current buffer.

Remember that you can customize these commands to match your preferred coding style. With these Vim commands, you’ll be able to efficiently manage indentation settings and maintain code consistency.