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Comment by jacobwilliamroy | Hacker News Reader

  :set ts=8 sts=0 sw=8 expandtab

I have secrets.

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Go one step further and add these to you vimrc:

    command Tab1 set ts=1 sts=1 sw=1
    command Tab2 set ts=2 sts=2 sw=2
    command Tab4 set ts=4 sts=4 sw=4
    command Tab8 set ts=8 sts=8 sw=8

slight addition:

    command! Tab1 set ts=1 sts=1 sw=1
    command! Tab2 set ts=2 sts=2 sw=2
    command! Tab4 set ts=4 sts=4 sw=4
    command! Tab8 set ts=8 sts=8 sw=8

The ! exclamation mark is there to prevent vim from complaining about a duplicate command already existing whenever you reload your vimrc.

Thank you for this. I've been typing out:

:set tabstop=4

:set shiftwidth=4

:set expandtab

Like a pleb for years. What's sts?

:help 'sts

Number of spaces that a <Tab> counts for while performing editing operations, like inserting a <Tab> or using <BS>. It "feels" like <Tab>s are being inserted, while in fact a mix of spaces and <Tab>s is used. This is useful to keep the 'ts' setting at its standard value of 8, while being able to edit like it is set to 'sts'. However, commands like "x" still work on the actual characters.

When 'sts' is zero, this feature is off.

You can also abbreviate expandtab to et.

Put them in your .vimrc, and put your dotfiles in git.

Hint: searching GitHub for "dotfiles" can be a fun and productive way to spend a Friday afternoon :-)

I mean locally yes, but I'm poking around on servers frequently enough and writing python there (Hey, I'm no saint) that it gets committed to memory eventually.

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