How do I make Vi-Vim never use tabs (converting spaces to tabs, bad!), makes the tab key == 4 spaces, and automatically indent code after curly brace blocks like emacs does?
Also, how do I save these settings so I never have to input them again.
I've seen other questions related to this but it always seems to be a little off from what I want.
This .vimrc looks somewhat promising: http://www.dotfiles.com/files/9/53_.vimrc
in your .vimrc:
set smartindent
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
The help files take a bit of time to get used to but the more you read the better vim gets:
:help smartindent
Even better, you can embed these settings in your source for portability:
:help auto-setting
To see your current settings:
:set all
As graywh points out in the comments, smartindent has been replaced by cindent which "Works more cleverly", although still mainly for languages with C-like syntax:
:help C-indenting
The auto-indent is based on the current syntax mode. I know that if you are editing Foo.java, then entering a { and hitting Enter indents the following line.
As for tabs, there are two settings. Within vim, type a colon and then "set tabstop=4" which will set the tabs to display as four spaces. Hit colon again and type "set expandtab" which will insert spaces for tabs.
You can put these settings in a .vimrc (or _vimrc on Windows) in your home directory, so you only have to type them once.
Related, if you open a file that uses both tabs and whitespace, assuming you've got
set expandtab ts=4 sw=4 ai
You can replace all the tabs with whitespace in the entire file with
:%retab
The best way to get filetype-specific indentation is to use ":filetype plugin indent on" in your vimrc. Then you can specify things like ":setl sw=4 sts=4 et" in .vim/ftplugin/c.vim, for example, without having to make those global for all files being edited and other non-C type syntaxes will get indented correctly, too (even lisps).