Bob Ippolito (@etrepum) on Haskell, Python, Erlang, JavaScript, etc.
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Stupid vim tricks

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In some projects, like PyObjC, the coding style is to use tabs in C/Objective-C code, and spaces in Python. I'm lazy, and haven't set it to do this on load, and I often forget to :set noet (not expand tabs) in vim. The quick trick I use to convert tabs to spaces (or vice versa) is to:
  • set/unset et as appropriate
  • make sure my sw (shiftwidth) and ts (tabstop) are both 4 (this is in my .vimrc)
  • indent the block of code once (this converts, but gives me extra indent) with > in visual mode
  • dedent it with < in visual mode

Voila, the whole mess is now converted from tabs to spaces or vice versa. Here's what I find to be comfortable in my .vimrc (I do have some custom stuff for python, pyrex, coloring, etc. but that's not as important):

set ffs=unix,dos,mac
set ts=4
set bs=2
set et
set sw=4
set sm
set sta
set sts=4
set ai