🚀 go-pugleaf

"Ravi Parthasarathy <ravi@blore.b30.ingr.COM>" writes:
| How does one change the default tabstop in vi?
| presently, i am typing in :set tabstop=4 while edititng a file. I would like
| to set this value and vi should come up with this tabstop everytime it is
| ivoked.

    I strongly recommend that you leave tabstops at the default 8 spaces,
since the convention for printers, tty devices, and just about everything
else in the world interprets a tab character as 8 spaces.

    Instead, change the "shiftwidth" setting in vi to whatever indentation
level you want (I use 4).  Then you use ^T and ^D in vi to indent and
unindent, respectively.

    To do this, you can either include

        setenv EXRC "set sw=4"

in your .login file (I'm assuming you use csh), or you can create a file
called .exrc in your home directory with the line

        set sw=4

I recommend the .exrc file, because it's much easier to add macros and other
settings to this file.  vi will use this file unless there's a .exrc file in
the current directory (so you can have other vi settings for a certain
directory).

______________________________________________________________________________
Steve Hollasch                                   Kubota Pacific Computer, Inc.
hollasch@kpc.com                                 Santa Clara, California