Q31489: Tabs Expanded to Eight Spaces; Filetab Switch Changes Spacing

Article: Q31489
Product(s): See article
Version(s): 1.00   | 1.00
Operating System(s): MS-DOS | OS/2
Keyword(s): ENDUSER | Tar70793 | mspl13_basic
Last Modified: 1-SEP-1988

Question:

Why are tabs expanded to eight spaces even though I set the tabstop
variable and the entab switch?

Response:

Neither the tabstops or the entab switch affect how tabs are expanded
when the file is read. The filetab switch is used to determine how
many spaces to expand each tab. For example, "filetab:4" will expand
each tab in the file to four spaces.

The entab switch controls how the editor converts multiple spaces
into tabs when a line is changed or a file is saved. The default is
one (1). The following chart shows different values and their
meanings:

Value   Meaning

0       Tabs are not used to represent white space.
1       All multiple spaces outside of quoted strings
        are converted to tabs (default).
2       All multiple spaces are converted to tabs.

Tabstops control the number of spaces between each logical tabstop
for the editor. The default is four (4).

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