12 Mar 2014

Automatically converting tabs to spaces in Sublime Text

Although there is of course a great deal of controversy surrounding the issue (!?), I prefer spaces over tabs when indenting code.

In order to keep my indentation consistent, I've written a Sublime Text plugin, which detects the presence of tab characters in any file I open and replaces them with the correct number of spaces, using Sublime's built in conversion feature:

class ExpandTabsOnLoad(sublime_plugin.EventListener):
    # Run ST's 'expand_tabs' command when opening a file,
    # only if there are any tab characters in the file
    def on_load(self, view):
        expand_tabs = view.settings().get("expand_tabs_on_load", False)
        if expand_tabs and view.find("\t", 0):
            view.run_command("expand_tabs", {"set_translate_tabs": True})
            tab_size = view.settings().get("tab_size", 0)
            message = "Converted tab characters to {0} spaces"
            sublime.status_message(message.format(tab_size))

Add a key named expand_tabs_on_load with a value of true to your global, user, project or syntax-specific .sublime-settings file to enable the plugin:

{
    "expand_tabs_on_load": true
}

Most of the similar plugins I've tried perform the tab replacement silently, when the file is saved. I prefer to do the replacement on load, because it allows a quick visual check of the file before committing to the changes. If you do want to silently replace tabs on save, this solution by Paulo Rodrigues Pinto works nicely.

The source code can be found here; I welcome any contributions or improvements!

Originally published on 03 Nov 2013; updated on 12 Mar 2014

Questions or comments? Get in touch @markeebee, or email [Turn On Javascript To View Email Address].

Automatically converting tabs to spaces in Sublime Text

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