Question

I happen to work on code in which some modules use tabs for indentation while others use spaces. Many text editors such as Np++ has some sort of an adaptive tabbing feature, which use spaces for indentation if the previous line (or block of code) use spaces, or tabs as the case may be.

I haven’t seen anything in vim like this. Is there any such plugin or setting for this?

Answer 1

I perfer to set my enviroment up like the below example demonstrates. I make a general rule of replacing tabs with spaces and use augroup when I need to override that rule. Makefiles are a good example of when you may require TABS and a cpp file is when you may require spaces.

" A tab produces a 4-space indentation
:set softtabstop=4
:set shiftwidth=4
:set expandtab
" replace tabs with spaces unless noted otherwise

" <snip>

augroup CPPprog
   au!
   "-----------------------------------
   " GENERAL SETTINGS
   "-----------------------------------
   au BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter             *.cpp,*.c,*.h,*.hpp   set nolisp
   au BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter             *.cpp,*.c,*.h,*.hpp   set filetype=cpp
   au FileType                                *                     set nocindent smartindent
   au FileType                                *.c,*.cpp             set cindent
   au BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter             *.cpp                 let g:qt_syntax=1
   " turn on qt syntax highlighting (a plugin)
   au BufNewFile,BufRead,BufEnter             *.c,*.h,*.cpp,*.hpp   let c_space_errors=1
   " trailing white space and spaces before a <Tab>

   " <snip>

augroup END

" <snip>

augroup filetype
  au! BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter *Makefile*,*makefile*,*.mk set filetype=make
augroup END
" In Makefiles, don't expand tabs to spaces, since we need the actual tabs
autocmd FileType make set noexpandtab