Question

I’m working on a large codebase, where each file has different indentation conventions: tabs, 4 spaces, 3 spaces, etc.

I currently default on tabs and do set shiftwidth=N expandtab smarttab when I come across a spaces-indented file, but that’s annoying.

Is there any functionality in Vim, or a plugin, which can recognize that, for instance, the current buffer uses an indentation with three spaces per shift?

Answer 1

Various plugins exist that attempt to handle that situation. Here are a few I found by search for detect indent at vim.org

• sleuth
• DetectIndent
• yafia
• IndentConsistencyCop
• IndentFinder