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Stefan van den Akker
Asked: 2014-01-26 02:51:39 +0800 CST

Python interactive interpreter: initial tab is 4, subsequent tabs are 8 spaces

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When I use the interactive Python interpreter, the width of the tabs seem out of sync with each other.

Specifically, the first tab gives me a tab width equivalent to 4 spaces, while the next tabs are 8 spaces wide.

Example

Is there a configuration file that I need to change, or some environment variable that needs to be set?

I'm using Python 2.7.3 on elementary OS 0.2 'Luna', but I also had the same problem when using the Python interpreter in Ubuntu 13.04 (Python version 2.7.5, I think).

python

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    That's normal. Because tab will align the cursor on the next multiple of 8 column and due to the 4 chars of the prompt, tab will just move the cursor 4 to the left to have it aligned on the 8th column. So that's not the python interpreter, but the terminal that have this behavior. You can see by using a space before hitting tab, it will still be aligned, even if python will not like it ( cause python internally will count tab as 8 chars, no matter the position or what is before or after ).

    AFAIK, this is a purely cosmetic issue, but if it bother you, I would suggest to use ipython, which is a much improved python command line.

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