Translate tabs to spaces on save?

[AnnanFay]

Is it possible to hook into file saving and loading. When a file is saved it could replace all tabs with spaces and when it loads it replaces the last (total % tabwidth) spaces with a tab.

This would help a bit with portability of files.

Never done ST dev but I think the only things you'd need are ways to hook into file saving/loading and a way to work out how wide a tab is.

[adzenith]

It could work decently well, but the roundtrip from tabs to spaces to tabs is not lossless. For example, if a tab is only one space wide using the current tab-width settings and given the length of the text before it, and then we convert that tab to a space, how do we know on the way back that it was supposed to be a tab and not a space? Or conversely, if you put multiple spaces in the middle of your text, on load we would probably assume you meant for a tab to be there.

Are you having portability issues? The layout should work in any program that uses the same tab-width as Sublime Text is set up to use.

[AnnanFay]

I see what you mean about losing information. The only way I can think to get around that is by inspecting the lines above and below to see if they line up then inferring indentation from that.

If I open a file with another editor it should look okay, however if I start editing it I suspect things might get wacky since most editors expect you to use either tabs or spaces. I'll post specifics if I find a wacky editor.

I did a few tests on editing with vim then reopening then files with ST. Everything works fine in vim, though there's problems after reopening with ST.

Example:

I make file in ST, open it with vim using spaces. (lines 1,2) Add a new line that indents up to previous indents. (line 3) Open it with ST and try indenting up to the line made with vim. (line 4)

long_variable\t= 0; a\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\t= 0; b\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s=0; c\t=0;

Example2:

I make file in ST, open it with vim using tabs. (lines 1,2) Add a new line that indents up to previous indents. (line 3)

long_variable\t= 0; a\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\t= 0; b\t\t\t\t= 0;

Open it with ST and try indenting up to the line made with vim.

long_variable\t= 0; a\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\t= 0; b\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\t\t\t\t= 0; c\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\s\t= 0;

[c4milo]

does this exist already in the current dev ST2 release? is there any update?

[adzenith]

No, as I described above, it's a lossy transformation. You can convert to spaces yourself if you want, but then there's no way to be sure where the tabs used to be when reopening the file.

[c4milo]

ok, shouldn't this issue be closed then?

[adzenith]

Well, I've just been thinking about it and it occurs to me that something like this could be possible. If you found the longest run of non-indenting spaces in the file, and replaced each tab with that many spaces plus one, then you could almost unambiguously tell where the tabs were. I mean, unless someone just made a file with a lot of spaces. Hm.