How to set Emacs tabs to spaces in every new file?

Question

I would like to have an .emacs setting so that tabs are always formed by consecutive spaces. Preferably in each possible mode. In other editors it never seemed a problem, but in .emacs I'm a bit stuck with the tabs I'm afraid.

Solution 1

add this in your .emacs:

(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)

or you can define a before-save-hook that eliminate hard tabs

Solution 2

Also of use, M-x untabify, which will convert all the tabs into spaces in the current region. You can use this to get rid of the existing tabs in files you've edited before you had the indent-tabs-mode set properly.

C-x h                   (M-x mark-whole-buffer)
M-x untabify

Comments

[Peter]

I don't know who voted you down, it works fine for me, at least in textmode, other modes I haven't tried. Tx.

[Peter]

+1 for usefull indeed,(although I used that exact combination of commands already :-))

[Jesper.Reenberg]

@dfa, that might not be a good idea. For example if you are editing make file :)

[nnyby]

I'm doing this in ruby-mode/rspec-mode and emacs is still converting some of my spaces to tabs..

[nnyby]

Nevermind -- I got around this with an "untabify on save" hook -- emacswiki.org/emacs/UntabifyUponSave

[Reb.Cabin]

It would be great to have the exact syntax for the before-save-hook, please & thanks