Tab Vs Space preferences in Vim

Question

Vim is very accommodating when it comes to tab Vs. space preferences. As I understand it, the tabstop setting indicates the width of a tab character. The

Answer 1

If expandtab is set then (as too much php points out), softtabstop becomes redundant. The only reason you might set shiftwidth differently from tabstop would be to cater to an odd habit; for instance, you use four-space indents but you prefer tab to insert eight spaces.

If expandtab is unset then things get fuzzier. If you want your code to look the same in with cat and non-vim editors as it does in vim, then tabstop should always be set at 8; in this case you would set softtabstop and shiftwidth both to your preferred indent level. If you instead prefer that every "physical tab" in the file represents one indent level, you would set tabstop and shiftwidth to your preferred indent level and leave softtabstop at zero (setting it equal to tabstop is equivalent except that if you change tabstop it will get out of sync, while zero just means "ignore this please").