Question

I have a javascript file that I created in Vim and it looks fine, but when I open it in another program such as just a text editor, the indentations are much greater (like 10 times the space) and some lines are misaligned. The only thing I have relating to lines in my ~/.vimrc file are:

"set tab indentation to 2 spaces"
:set tabstop=2

filetype plugin indent on

Has anyone seen this behavior or know what could be the issue?

Answer 1

Your vimrc file is configured to show tabs as 2 spaces, but the way tabs are shown isn’t the same in every program. Sometimes they’re shown as 4, sometimes 8. A typical argument is to use multiple spaces instead of actual tabs, to make the file look consistent regardless of the text editor’s tab settings, but at the cost of increased file size. A search for “tabs vs spaces” will yield plenty of arguments for both sides.

If you decide to use spaces, you could, for example, configure vim to insert spaces whenever you press the tab key:

:set tabstop=2
:set shiftwidth=2
:set expandtab

(from vim wiki)