Tab key == 4 spaces and auto-indent after curly braces in Vim

Question

How do I make vi-Vim never use tabs (converting spaces to tabs, bad!), makes the tab key == 4 spaces, and automatically indent code after curly brace blocks like Emacs does?

Answer 1

edit your ~/.vimrc

$ vim ~/.vimrc

add following lines :

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set softtabstop=4
set expandtab