Re: Indenting with spaces rather than tabs

[wael-zwaiter@gmx.com]

Can I do as follows, so that tabs are removed when "dfv-untabify-state"
is "true".

(defvar dfv-untabify-state nil)
(defun clean-before-save ()
  "Removes trailing spaces and tabs upon exiting"

  (delete-trailing-whitespace)
  (when (dfv-untabify-state)
      (unless (member major-mode '(makefile-gmake-mode makefile-mode))
	(untabify (point-min) (point-max))) ))


> Sent: Friday, January 29, 2021 at 5:25 PM
> From: "Robert Thorpe" <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com>
> To: wael-zwaiter@gmx.com
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Indenting with spaces rather than tabs
>
> wael-zwaiter@gmx.com writes:
>
> > Want to indent with spaces rather than tabs and have found the command
> >
> > (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)
> >
> > But one can also use "M-x untabify".
> >
> > What should I use for my init file?  Am not so sure about using "setq"
> > rather than "setq-default".
>
> If you set indent-tabs-mode like that then it applies to things that you
> edit.
>
> But it does not apply to all of the file.  Parts of the file you don't
> edit are untouched.  Now often this is what you want.  If you're working
> on a project in a group then you don't really want whitespace changes.
> (Though really everyone should be using the same convention for tabs).
>
> On the other hand, untabify deals with the whole file.  It changes parts
> you have never edited or viewed.
>
> The setq-default part means that you're setting the default value for
> buffers.  But modes in buffers may over-ride it with a local variable
> write.  I'm not sure that you need setq-default here.
>
> BR,
> Robert Thorpe
>