Substitute all tabs with four blank spaces

Question

The following command will substitute all tabs in a file with four blank spaces:

%s/\t/    /g

In order to run this command whenever I open a new file I included it in my .vimrc by adding:

autocmd BufNewFile  *   exec "%s/\t/    /g"

However this didn't work. Does anyone know why?

New files don't contain any tabs, because they are empty. Are you looking for BufRead? — Rich, May 24 '18 at 9:02
This is a very dangerous command. It will alter every file you open automatically. And if the file is readonly or nomodifiable it will probably throw a bunch of errors, also the use of gdefault has to be considered. I would not recommend this setting! Better would be to set your tabstop setting appropriately and have Vim display tabs as 4 spaces. — Christian Brabandt, May 24 '18 at 9:50

scrapy · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-24 09:05:12Z

1

autocmd BufRead  *   exec "%s/\t/    /g"

answered May 24 '18 at 9:05

scrapy

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you don't need the exe. BTW: are you sure you want to alter existing files automatically? – Christian Brabandt May 24 '18 at 9:39
1

I am sure i want to alter existing files automatically. – scrapy May 25 '18 at 6:40

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