Question

In Visual Studio 2010, when I open a source code file that has a mix of tabs and spaces, a message will appear warning me as such and give me a chance to correct it. Is there such a feature in Eclipse whether native or via plugins?

Answer 1

Admittedly, this is not as nice as Visual Studio’s solution and very similar to the answer above, but here’s how I resolved this.

1. Go to Window > Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors
2. Check the box “Show whitespace characters”
3. Click on “Configure Visibility”
4. Check the boxes under the Leading column for Ideographic space and Tab
5. Check the boxes under the Trailing column for Space, Ideographic space, and Tab
6. All other boxes should be unchecked.
7. “Ok” everything. You may have to reopen existing windows for this to take effect.

If you prefer having your code tabbed instead of using spaces, then you’ll slightly modify these instructions to show leading spaces instead of leading tabs. In any case, having this set up as such gives me instant visibility when I have a file that uses tabs instead of spaces or mixed tabs and spaces.

I would not recommend using CTRL+SHIFT+F as it makes for a subversion nightmare when diffing old and new code. Alternatively, simply do a CTRL+F, check the Regex box, replace \t with four spaces. You’ll still see a lot of diffs in subversion, but it’s easy to pick out that you simply updated the spaces.