Tab key behaviour

[kj]

The one thing I still really can't get my head around in Helix (and I've been using it for a few years now) is how the tab key behaves, it feels very unintuitive/inconsistent.

• Tab on blank line (or before first non-whitespace character)
  • Indent (insert spaces or tab depending on language)
• Shift+Tab on blank line (or before first non-whitespace character)
  • Indent (insert spaces or tab depending on language)
• Tab after first non-whitespace character
  • No idea, it sometimes does nothing (e.g. in a scratch buffer with no language), or the cursor skips somewhere ahead, sometimes to the end of the line or the next paragraph (something to do with Tree Sitter perhaps?)
• Shift+Tab after first non-whitespace character
  • Indent from cursor (insert spaces or tab depending on language)

And then of course it's also used to select a completion if the completion prompt comes up (I'd rather just use Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p myself). What's up with the behaviour in the third point? And how can I just insert a literal tab character?

[the-mikedavis]

Assuming you're running on master, that third point is #4443. You can turn off smart tab: https://docs.helix-editor.com/master/configuration.html#editorsmart-tab-section

[kj]

Ahh, that's it! Thank you (and you're right, I actually forgot I was on master so that would explain why I couldn't find anything in the documentation).

Do you know if it's possible to input a literal tab character in a language that is configured for space indent?

Anyway, this was definitely my main issue. It feels more consistent now with that option disabled.

[pascalkuthe]

Inserting tab characters with a different ident setting is not possible but that seems super nieche. You can change the identity setting at any time using :ident (or in your config).

[kj]

Yeah it probably is actually (I think it felt like more of an issue earlier as I didn't have a clear idea about what was happening).

[Omnikar]

If you really need a tab character you can do !echo -n "\t" as a workaround.