Is there a way to get Eclipse to treat 4 spaces exactly as it treats a tab?

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+1 Q:

Is there a way to get Eclipse to treat 4 spaces exactly as it treats a tab?

I understand how to get Eclipse to insert spaces in place of tabs, but then I'd rather not have to arrow through 12 spaces to reach an indented block.

Bonus points if there's a way to hide the spaces from the 'show whitespace characters'. I like to see whitespace characters for tabs and carriage returns, but the display gets too cluttered when spaces are also displayed.

+5 A:

Try CTRL+[right,left] arrow key. Certainly one of my most-used combos.

Not Sure 2009-07-17 00:41:38

+1 - I'm not very familiar with Eclipse, but this sounds like the right answer for any "sane" IDE. It sounds like the OP is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, without using the tools already at his disposal.

GalacticCowboy 2009-07-17 00:46:22

Heh - I do this by default but had to think about it :) +1

javamonkey79 2009-07-17 00:50:25

On OS X I have ALT+Arrow or CMD+Arrow. Both of which are helpful but have different behavior from arrowing past a single tab. Alt goes to the beginning/end of the nearest word, and CMD goes to the beginning/end of the current line. The ALT implementation is especially bad, because if you're at the left edge of a line, and ALT+Right, it moves the cursor to the *end* of the first word.The TextMate editor treats collections of spaces just like tabs, so this isn't some imaginary solution.

Luke Bayes 2009-07-18 19:16:36

As it turns out, this appears to not be possible in Eclipse.

Luke Bayes 2009-08-24 06:38:39

Does "Not Sure"s answer not answer your question?

MatrixFrog 2009-08-24 06:53:54

Not really - I commented below his answer with more details. What I was looking for was a configuration option that allowed me to simply press arrow keys (not key combinations) to move past each set of four spaces exactly as if they were a tab. This works great in TextMate, and allows one to take advantage of the benefits of spaces over tabs, without suffering the biggest drawback of spaces.

Luke Bayes 2009-08-29 23:40:40

ansaurus

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Is there a way to get Eclipse to treat 4 spaces exactly as it treats a tab?

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