How can I replace ^I into tab spaces in vim editor for .java file?

Question

When I open my .java file in vim, I could see a couple of lines prefixed with one / more ^I characters. It looks like tabs in Eclipse that has got converted into ^I.

I would like to replace a single ^I into spaces with 4 characters.

E.g

^I^I^I^IList<History> rulePackagesHistory = result.getHistory();

How can do that in vim editor?

Answer 1

Add these lines to your .vimrc:

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

After that, each new tab character entered will be changed to 4 spaces, old tabs don't. You must type:

:retab

This will convert all existing tabs in files to spaces.

If you don't want to use retab, you can use perl to replace each tab by 4 spaces:

perl -i.bak -pe 's/\t/    /g' file

Answer 2

For the specific file you can run the following while being in vim

You will need to press Ctrl+V+I to create ^I.

:%s /^I/^I^I^I^I/g