Re: TAB

[Kevin Rodgers]

Dan Anderson wrote:

> On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 12:31, Kevin Rodgers wrote:
> > David Rasmussen wrote:
> >
> > > When I edit java-files, most of the times emacs inserts spaces when I 
> > > press TAB to indent something. But sometimes I've found it inserts a TAB 
> > > character instead. Why?
> >
> > C-h v indent-tabs-mode
> >
> > > How can I turn it off? I never want TAB 
> > > characters when editing Java or C++ source code files.
> > (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)     ; for all modes, or
> >
> > (add-hook 'java-mode-hook               ; for just java mode
> >           (lambda () (setq indent-tabs-mode nil)))
>
> That tells him how to turn of tabs.  Is there any way to change tabs to
> spaces?  i.e. when tabbing insert 4 spaces instead of a tab (if tabs
> default to 4 spaces long)?

I don't even know what you mean by "turn off tabs".  Setting indent-tabs-mode

to nil does exactly what its doc string says: the TAB key, which is bound to
c-indent-command, will always insert spaces and never insert tab characters:

| TAB runs the command c-indent-command
|    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `cc-cmds'.
| (c-indent-command &optional ARG)
|
| Indent current line as C code, and/or insert some whitespace.
...
|  [*] The amount and kind of whitespace inserted is controlled by the
|  variable `c-insert-tab-function', which is called to do the actual
|  insertion of whitespace.  Normally the function in this variable
|  just inserts a tab character, or the equivalent number of spaces,
|  depending on the variable `indent-tabs-mode'.


--
Kevin Rodgers