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How do I insert a literal tab character?


I am editing a Makefile in XCode. How do I actually insert a tab character, ASCII value 9? If I press TAB, it inserts 4 spaces, and make complains because decades ago the creator of make had a handful of users and didn't want to change the program to not require literal tabs because it would break backwards compatibility or something.

Normally when editing a Makefile I just copy and paste an existing TAB character, but with a new clean one, I cannot do this.


Solution

  • In Xcode 6.4, at least, you can enter a literal tab with Option-Tab. This seems to work regardless of the indentation settings.