* allstars <[email protected]> [2009-08-27 14:03]:
> i try to remove 4 spaces in my file, so i type
> :%s/\ \{4}//g
> and it works
>
> now i want to replace the tab with 4 spaces
> :%s/ ^I / \ \{4} /g
> but it cannot work
indeed - it cannot work because you
have not included a tab, but only
its graphical presentation as "^I".
use "\t" instead. see ":h pattern".
besides, you can use a quantifier only
within a pattern for matching -
but not to create a sequences of
any characters in the replacement.
i guess what you want is this:
:%s/ \t / /g
it seems you are trying to expand
tabs to a fixed amount of space.
mind you, the expansion of a tab stops
at the next multiple of "tabstop".
as vim renders tabs and their expansion
on the screen quite nicely, it also has
a command to switch from tabs to spaces:
:retab
mind you, tabs will only be expanded to
spaces when "expandtab" (et) is on, too.
example:
:set tabstop=4 expandtab
:retab
or shorter:
:se ts=4 et|ret
you can map this, of course:
:map <f7> :set ts=4 et|retab<cr>
enjoy!
Sven
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