topic Re: How to remap the <TAB> key in vi ? in Operating System - HP-UX

How to remap the key in vi ?

Graham Cameron_1 — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:32:21 GMT

How do I disable (or remap to 4 spaces) the tab key in vi insert mode?

I've tried various combinations in .exrc, like

map! " "

None of them work.

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Carlos Fernandez Riera — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:59:37 GMT

I think you need
tab 4.

See man vi and ex

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Andreas Voss — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 11:52:51 GMT

Hi,

tab key can be manipulated with the tabstop setting:

in .exrc add entry:
set tabstop=#

where # is the new value (default is 8)

OR

in vi type ie:

:set tabstop=4

Regards

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Carlos Fernandez Riera — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 11:55:46 GMT

vi
:set all

noautoindent mesg noslowopen
autoprint nomodelines tabstop=8
noautowrite nonumber taglength=0
nobeautify nonovice tags=tags /usr/lib/tags
directory=/var/tmp nooptimize tagstack
nodoubleescape paragraphs=IPLPPPQPP LIpplpipnpbp term=ansi
noedcompatible prompt noterse
noerrorbells noreadonly timeout
noexrc redraw timeoutlen=500
flash remap ttytype=ansi
hardtabs=8 report=5 warn
noignorecase scroll=16 window=32
keyboardedit sections=NHSHH HUuhsh+c wrapscan
keyboardedit! shell=/sbin/sh wrapmargin=0
nolisp shiftwidth=8 nowriteany
nolist noshowmatch
magic noshowmode
See man ex for

set hardtabs, tags, b

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Graham Cameron_1 — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 13:27:38 GMT

Thanks guys but that doesn't fix my problem, probably my explanation was poor.
I want to prevent TAB (ie control-I) characters getting into my files in the first place.
All that "set tabstop" does is to set how many spaces are used to display each TAB.
"set hardtabs" seems to do the same, and I
can find no "tab 4" in any man page.

To see what I mean, run up vi and say
:set list
Go into insert mode and hit the TAB character a few times. What you will see is ^I^I^I...
What I want is spaces, not tabs.

Graham

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Wodisch — Wed, 17 Oct 2001 14:09:39 GMT

Hello Graham,

I am pretty certain that you cannot do that with good old vi! Since Bill Joy has used "white space" as delimiter for the definition of mappings, and TAB and SPACE are, the only chance would be a "post-processing" of your file after saveing it. Then you would use some script for this (none does exist - you will have to it in perl or awk or such).

Sorry,
Wodisch

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Eugen Cocalea — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 06:04:23 GMT

Hi,

I'm not a master of vi, but have you tried to map TAB to somethink like 4 * insert space? If I remember right, you can do:

: command

that repeats the command times.

E.

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Graham Cameron_1 — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 06:40:27 GMT

Thanks for all your help.

Wodisch came closest in confirming it cannot be done.

I guess I will have to continue, as before, with, in my .exrc file:

set shiftwidth=4 tabstop=4
map ^T :1,$ s/ / /g

(Where the first string is the tab character and the second is 4 spaces)
and then get all my users to remember to type ^T before exit.
Or write a wrapper.

Thanks again.

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Carlos Fernandez Riera — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 08:05:40 GMT

Do you know cb command?

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Suhas_3 — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 11:32:46 GMT

You need not worry about tabs while editing. After you finish eidting and come out of vi, you can use unix command "expand" to expand the tabs to spaces. see man expand
hope this helps.

Re: How to remap the key in vi ?

Nathan Coulter — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 15:03:58 GMT

If you are using vim, you coud:

:set expandtab