In Vim, you can make tabs act as 4 spaces by setting a few options.

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One-time in current session

Inside Vim, run:

:set tabstop=4
:set shiftwidth=4
:set expandtab

• tabstop=4 → a tab character is shown as 4 spaces wide
• shiftwidth=4 → indentation commands use 4 spaces
• expandtab → pressing Tab inserts spaces instead of a tab character

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Permanent setting

Add this to your ~/.vimrc (create it if it doesn’t exist):

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

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Extra tip

If you want to quickly switch between tabs vs. spaces in Vim:

• To turn spaces back into actual tabs:

  :set noexpandtab

• To convert existing tabs to spaces in the file:

  :retab