Hi,
When vi/vim joins two lines (vim command 'J') if there is any white-space at the join point it replaces it all with a single space, otherwise it inserts one space. I use SE 2009 in vim mode and generally it is doing that, but often I find spurious tab character in my code where lines have been joined.
After a bit of trial and error I've found that when I join two lines, if the join point is one character less than a tab stop position then it inserts a tab, otherwise it inserts a space. This is particularly annoying because it means the inserted tab takes up one space in the view so you can't see that its happened - it only shows up visually if other changes are made to the line so the tab's position changes.
For example, if I have it set for a tab size of 4 or 8 and edit these two blocks to join the first two lines in each case:
if (aa)
{
}
if (aaa)
{
}
The result is this:
if (aa) {
}
if (aaa) {
}
Which may look the same (well it would in a fixed font anyway) but in the first case the character inserted before the { is a tab, not a space.
Ian
