How to use only tab (not space) in vim

Question

I prefer to use tab than white space (may be slightly different from most others)

But I found that when I hit Enter at the end of the line, it will add some white spaces , but not a tab . So I have to delete them and click the tab .

I want to know how to install vim as:

• use only tab for line indentation
• the tab looks like 4-spaces, but actually it is a tab
• when you hit Enter at the end of a line, a new line starts only with tabs

I searched for this for a while, but did not find a good answer. Thank you in advance

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UPDATE

@Alok's answer has proven itself in most cases. But I just found, sometimes it depends on the type of file. For example, if you are editing a haml file and there is vimfiles/indent/ in vimfiles/indent/ , then all tabs will be converted to space . Therefore, if you want it to be a tab , you should modify (or delete) the corresponding indent file.

Answer 1

Settings you are looking for:

 set autoindent set noexpandtab set tabstop=4 set shiftwidth=4 

As a separate line:

 set autoindent noexpandtab tabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 

autoindent can be replaced with smartindent or cindent , depending on your tastes. Also see filetype plugin indent on .

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indenting_source_code