kelvin@gordon.UUCP (Kelvin Lam) (01/28/88)
Hi there! I'm the person who asked the "<tab> to space under vi" question.
Thank you to all who responsed to my question.
Based on what I get from the mail and reading other's posting:
There is no direct way to do it in vi, but there are work arounds.
Work arounds:
1. Using external filters within 'vi'. Suppose you have a filter
called 'detab' then you can type:
:%!detab<cr>
You can use either (BSD) /usr/ucb/unexpand or (SYS5) 'pr -t -i80'
2. Do a global replacement of <tab>.
3. Re-map <tab> key to insert n-<space>.
Note for method 2 and 3:
This isn't what I want and it won't get the desired result
because not all <tab>'s can be replace by 8 spaces.
Alignment problem, you know.
4. Use ^T and ^D instead of <tab> or re-map <tab> to ^T.
Note for method 4:
It only works on leading spaces/tab/indentation.
Kelvin Lam
(...!necntc!gordon!kelvin)dougs@sequent.UUCP (Doug Schwartz) (01/30/88)
In article <465@gordon.UUCP>, kelvin@gordon.UUCP (Kelvin Lam) writes: ... > Work arounds: > 3. Re-map <tab> key to insert n-<space>. > Note for method 2 and 3: > This isn't what I want and it won't get the desired result > because not all <tab>'s can be replace by 8 spaces. > Alignment problem, you know. I must be missing something here. I thought you wanted to be able to insert N spaces when you pressed the Tab key while in {insert/open/append} mode in vi. If so, this suggestion will always work (put it in your .exrc file): :map!<sp>^V^V<tab>^V^V<sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp><sp> where: <sp> is a space <tab> is a tab ^V is control-v Note that this assumes you are using vi on the .exrc file. The ^V^V combination is needed, since the first one escapes the second one which in turn escapes the <tab> or <sp>'s. If this isn't what you want, tell me where I am amiss. Now if you use an advanced editor, such as emacs, you could just: (setq tab-width 8) -- Doug Schwartz Sequent Computer Beaverton, Oregon tektronix!ogcvax!sequent!dougs