Replace tabs with spaces in vim

Once you've got expandtab on as per the other answers, the extremely convenient way to convert existing files according to your new settings is:

:retab

It will work on the current buffer.

IIRC, something like:

set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab

should do the trick. If you already have tabs, then follow it up with a nice global RE to replace them with double spaces.

If you already have tabs you want to replace,

:retab

Try

set expandtab

for soft tabs.

To fix pre-existing tabs:

:%s/\t/  /g

I used two spaces since you already set your tabstop to 2 spaces.

This worked for me:

you can see tabs with first doing this:

:set list

then to make it possible to replace tabs then do this:

:set expandtab

then

:retab

now all tabs have been replaced with spaces you can then go back to normal viewing like this :

:set nolist

Add following lines to your .vimrc

set expandtab
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
map <F2> :retab <CR> :wq! <CR>

Open a file in vim and press F2 The tabs will be converted to 4 spaces and file will be saved automatically.

If you want to keep your \t equal to 8 spaces then consider setting:

   set softtabstop=2 tabstop=8 shiftwidth=2

This will give you two spaces per <TAB> press, but actual \t in your code will still be viewed as 8 characters.

This got it working for me:

:set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 expandtab | retab

if u are using makefile or other text file, which need real tab other than some spaces, add set noexpandtab in your ~/vimrc first, or just input set noexpandtab command, when edit some file with vi(vim)