created February 16, 2008 · complexity basic · author Metacosm · version 7.0
You can set the 'expandtab' (abbreviated to 'et') option so each tab that you type is converted to an equivalent number of spaces. And you can use the :retab command to convert all existing tabs to spaces. You can do both in one command:
:set et|retab
You can also convert spaces to tabs:
:set noet|retab!
Both of the above examples should be used with caution. They convert all sequences, even those that might be in a "quoted string like this".
This tip shows how to convert only the indents at the left margin. Any spaces or tabs after the first non-white character are not affected.
Super retab
Use the following command to define a new SuperRetab command. You could enter this in Vim, or put it in your vimrc:
:command! -nargs=1 -range SuperRetab <line1>,<line2>s/\v%(^ *)@<= {<args>}/\t/g
For example, you may have a code snippet which uses two-space indents, and you want to entab the indents (convert each leading group of two spaces to a tab). To do this, visually select the code (press V then j), then enter:
:'<,'>SuperRetab 2
The above command would change:
for {
that;
}
to the following ("|-------" represents a tab):
|-------for {
|-------|-------that;
|-------}
The command :SuperRetab 5 would give the same result from the following selected text:
for {
that;
}
Alternative
An alternative super retab procedure is to use the following two commands:
:command! -range=% -nargs=0 Tab2Space execute "<line1>,<line2>s/^\\t\\+/\\=substitute(submatch(0), '\\t', repeat(' ', ".&ts."), 'g')"
:command! -range=% -nargs=0 Space2Tab execute "<line1>,<line2>s/^\\( \\{".&ts."\\}\\)\\+/\\=substitute(submatch(0), ' \\{".&ts."\\}', '\\t', 'g')"
The above defines a Tab2Space and a Space2Tab command that convert leading whitespace (spaces and tabs that are not at the beginning of a line are not affected). These commands use the current 'tabstop' (abbreviated as 'ts') option.
Examples:
" Convert all leading spaces to tabs (default range is whole file): :Space2Tab " Convert lines 11 to 15 only (inclusive): :11,15Space2Tab " Convert last visually-selected lines: :'<,'>Space2Tab " Same, converting leading tabs to spaces: :'<,'>Tab2Space