Thanks to the folks in #vim on freenode, here’s a quick tutorial on how to fix the indentation and tabs in an xml file from within VIM…

First find out what your current settings are by typing:

:filetype

Should return something like “filetype detection:ON plugin:OFF indent:OFF”

1) :set filetype=xml
2) :filetype indent on
3) :e
4) gg=G

Basically what this is doing is setting the filetype to xml (so it can pickup the XML indenting rules (see :e $VIMRUNTIME/indent for a list of available languages)

Then turn on indent, then reload it (:e).

The last step is ‘gg=G‘ which will acutally retab the entire file (gg is line 1, and G is last line).

You can find more info by reading vim help files:

:he gg
:he =
:he G
:he :filetype

Note: Most commands in vim are run with by typing “:command, you can find help by typing “:help command” or simply “:he cmd”. HOWEVER, the main command to retab “gg=G” is NOT preceeded by a “:”.