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

One useful option is softtabstop=-1 which will set it to the value of shiftwidth.
You can also set shiftwidth to 0, in which case the tabstop value will be used.