How do you set a tab to 4 spaces in emacs?

How do you set a tab to 4 spaces in emacs?

Just change the value of indent-line-function to the insert-tab function and configure tab insertion as 4 spaces. Update: Since Emacs 24.4: tab-stop-list is now implicitly extended to infinity. Its default value is changed to nil which means a tab stop every tab-width columns.

How do I change the tab spacing in Emacs?

With tab-width equal to the default value of 8, Emacs would insert 1 tab plus 2 spaces. Use t rather than nil to tell Emacs to use tab characters where appropriate. If you only want this in a particular mode, add (setq indent-tabs-mode nil) to that mode’s hook.

How do I change the tab space in Emacs?

Emacs normally uses both tabs and spaces to indent lines. If you prefer, all indentation can be made from spaces only. To request this, set indent-tabs-mode to nil . This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the current buffer, but there is a default value which you can change as well.

How do I change the tab spacing in emacs?

When to use indent-tabs-mode nil Stack Exchange?

I use (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil) in my init file so to avoid using TABs but when I write some files (like C++ files) then it allows me to insert TABs if I am in an if-statement for example… Stack Exchange Network

How to enable tabs and spaces in Emacs?

If you’d like to also activate these functions on the fly, using M-x, you can use the (interactive) function in Emacs Lisp. Here’s the documentation. First thing we do in the enable-tabs function is set the TAB key to tab-to-tab-stop.

Is there such thing as indentation in Lisp?

The concept of indentation really doesn’t exist in Lisp. It’s all about alignment, and tabs will screw up the precise alignment that Lisp requires. Remember not to define the variable custom-tab-width twice! It should be defined above your enable/disable tabs functions.

When to use tabchars instead of spcchars in Emacs?

Non-nilindent-tabs-modemeans that Emacs can use TABchars instead of a number of consecutive SPCchars. If the value is nilin a given buffer then indentation by Emacs (e.g. automatic indentation) uses only SPCchars. But even in that case there is nothing preventing you from inserting a TABchar (e.g., using C-q TAB).