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When I write Python code, I personally prefer indenting with 4 spaces instead of a tab. However, in my day job I work with a codebase that uses only tabs.

When I open one of these files in emacs, tabs display eight spaces wide. I have tried adding both (setq-default tab-width 4) and (setq tab-width 4) to my init file, but neither of these seem to have any affect on this problem. I have used whitespace-mode to confirm that it is indeed one tab that I am seeing and not two, and that they are indeed eight spaces wide. When I check the value of the variable tab-width from whatever buffer I am having the problem in, I get the following message:

tab-width is a variable defined in `C source code'.
Its value is 8
Local in buffer <whateverbuffer>; global value is 4

I know that I want Its value to be 4 instead of eight, but I have not had any luck setting it. Also, in the documentation it says of tab-width: Automatically becomes buffer-local when set...I have a feeling my problem stems from this, but I don't quite understand what this means. Any suggestions? Thank you!

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    Are you editing those python files using the python mode? – Nsukami _ Oct 21 '15 at 15:18
  • Yes, I am. And I just noticed that when I change into another mode, the tabs display as I want them too. I am assuming I need to specify in my init for python-mode to use a tab-width of 8, but not sure how... – elethan Oct 21 '15 at 15:22
  • You can use the python-mode-hook to set the tab-width as you want. – Nsukami _ Oct 21 '15 at 15:37
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    You may need to set python-indent-offset also, which should be done outside of the major-mode hook so its customized value is used when python-mode first initializes. If @Nsukami_ could take a look at my draft answer (deleted) and post a proper answer, that would be appreciated. I'm still not familiar enough with python-mode and I don't want to steal @Nsukami_'s thunder. – lawlist Oct 21 '15 at 15:41
  • Thank you, that did it! Actually, buried in my init file I already set python-indent-offset appropriately, and set tab-width using the python-mode-hook - my problem was that I was using setq-default instead of setq. I will research the difference between these two to better understand why it wasn't working the way I had it. – elethan Oct 21 '15 at 15:44
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The first line when enabling python-mode is (set (make-local-variable 'tab-width) 8). Because tab-width is a buffer-local variable, a new value would need to be set subsequent to the code above. The most common way this is done is with a major-mode hook, in this case the python-mode-hook.

There is also a variable called python-indent-offset, which is used when the function python-indent-guess-indent-offset can't figure out what indentation to use. That should be set outside of the major-mode hook so that its custom value is available when python-mode first initializes.

(setq python-indent-offset 4)

(defun python-custom-settings ()
  (setq tab-width 4))

(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'python-custom-settings)
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