Reformat with Tabs for Vim

While I’m not a big fan of TABS in my source code, a recent project I’m on has declared tabs are the way to go. So I needed to figure out two things.

1. How do I tell Vim to use TABS on this project, but not on other project’s I’m on?
2. How do I reformat some of my code to be tabs instead of spaces?

Using directory specific .vimrc file

This one was easy. Go into your global .vimrc file and enter this

set exrc " Per directory .vimrc file

Now in the root directory of your project, you will add a .vimrc file with these contents

set noexpandtab
set copyindent
set preserveindent
set softtabstop=0
set shiftwidth=4
set tabstop=4

NOTE: You may want to add .vimrc to your global .gitignore file so you don’t accidentally include it in your code :)

Reformatting code to use tabs instead of spaces

This one is already built right in. Just highlight a section of text in visual mode. Then type :retab! this should swap tabs for spaces. Try it out and tell me what you think.