How to find and replace all tabs with spaces in idle
python, python-idle
Solution
IDLE doesn't let you search to literal tab characters. You can paste one into the search box (as suggested by will), but it will never match anything.
However, it does let you do regular expression searches, and the regular expression `\t` will match a literal tab. So, turn on the `Regular expression` checkbox, and put '`\t` in the `Find:` box, and 4 or 8 spaces (as appropriate) in the `Replace:` box.
But, as will suggested, it's better to use IDLE's features instead of trying to do things manually: Select the block of code with tabbed (or inconsistent) indentation, go to the `Format` menu, and select `Untabify Region`. (Or just hit control-6.) If the tabs were inserted with an editor that uses 4-space tabs, you may need to first use `New Indent Width` and change it to 4, then `Untabify Region`.
IDLE doesn't have any code to guess what your tab size was when you wrote the inconsistent code. The only editor I know of that does is emacs. If you just open the file in emacs, it will try to guess your settings, and then you can select the whole buffer and `untabify-region`. If it guessed right, you're golden; if it guessed wrong, don't save the buffer, because now it'll be even harder to fix. (If you're one of the 3 people in the world who knows how to read emacs lisp but doesn't like emacs, you could look through the `python-mode.el` source and see how it does its magic.)
Problem
I have an invisible `expected an indented block` error, which is likely caused by me using tabs instead of spaces. When I open the "find/replace" window and try to enter TAB in the `find` field IDLE unsurprisingly just skips to the `replace` field. How do I do this? Final update: Thank you for all answers, much appreciated. My problem was that python wants the function comments to be indented too, that is ``` def imdheladumb(): """ I'm dum as hel """ ``` does not work, it needs to be ``` def imdheladumb(): """ I'm dum as hel """ ```