How to change tab width in git diff?

Question

The standard spacing for a tab is 8 characters.

I prefer to view that as 4 characters in my editors and console. I can easily change this default behavior on console with the tabs command:

tabs -4

However, when using git diff or git show it displays in the default 8 character tab whitespace.

How can I get git diff to render tabs as 4 character spaces?

score 54 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

54

This actually has nothing to do with git diff.

git diff actually renders a tab, which is later converted by your terminal emulators (for instance, gnome-terminal) to spaces.

Go to the preference of your terminal emulator to change that setting.

Also, git may use a pager, so you might want to configure it like that:

git config --global core.pager 'less -x1,5'

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

answered Sep 06 '16 at 15:23

blue112

6

Hmm, my terminal is set to 4... This just doesn't appear the same in `git diff` So if I `cat file` then tabs are 4 chars, but `git diff file` they are instead 8. – Jeff Puckett Sep 06 '16 at 15:25
5

Nice, I see your edit. It is the pager, thanks! Will accept in 6 more minutes... – Jeff Puckett Sep 06 '16 at 15:29
7

For eventual use, `export LESS=Rx4` can be useful instead of changing the global Git configuration. – Ferenc Wágner Aug 02 '18 at 11:22
How can it be converted by the terminal emulator and yet changing of the behaviour is done in... `less`? If `less` output a tab, which is then converted by the terminal emulator, then there would be no need to change settings for `less` specifically? – Armen Michaeli Feb 24 '22 at 10:15

1 Answers1