Auto-indent with spaces, but insert TAB when I press the TAB key

Question

I like to indent my shell scripts with two spaces instead of a TAB. So, I set setlocal shiftwidth=2 in ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/sh.vim. It works, but I noticed that when the indentation level gets greater than 8 spaces, Vim replaces them with a tab. So, I also added "setlocal expandtab" in this file.

Unfortunately, this replaces all tabs by 8 spaces, even the ones inserted when I press the TAB key.

I'm looking for suitable settings to always have indentation (automatic or manual) composed of spaces only, but still insert a real tab when I press the TAB key.

On other Q&A, I found functions to toggle between spaces and tabs, but I'm looking for a solution which doesn't involve any kind of toggling.

Likewise, sticking with shiftwidth only and use :retab from time to time after momentarily enabling expandtab would not be a suitable solution (let alone the fact that since tabs and spaces are indistinguishable on screen, I wouldn't know when a file needs to be "retabbed").

Answer 1

You can always type a literal tab using <c-v><tab>. Thus, you can set expandtab to always keep indent spaces, and use

inoremap <tab> <c-v><tab>

to always insert a tab character when pressing the tab key. You should not use :retab at all in this case, since it will convert your tabs into spaces.