How to remap the <TAB> key in vi ?

[Graham Cameron_1]

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.

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

I think you need
tab 4.


See man vi and ex

[Andreas Voss]

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

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

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

[Graham Cameron_1]

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

[Wodisch]

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

[Eugen Cocalea]

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.

[Graham Cameron_1]

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.

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

Do you know cb command?

[Suhas_3]

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.

[Nathan Coulter]

If you are using vim, you coud:

:set expandtab