A tab is not inherently a fixed number of spaces; it’s a special character that your editor or program decides how wide to display.

Short answer

  • Historically and in many tools, a tab is shown as 4 or 8 spaces.
  • Modern editors let you configure this, often to 2, 4, or 8 spaces.
  • So the real answer: “it depends on the settings,” not a universal number.

What a tab actually is

A tab is its own control character (often written as \t), not a bunch of literal spaces.

Your editor or terminal looks at that character and jumps the cursor to the next “tab stop,” which is why it can appear as different visual widths.

Example: with tab stops every 4 columns, a tab can move you 1–4 columns depending on where you are in the line, so it doesn’t always equal “4 spaces” even if the interval is 4.

Common conventions today

In coding and text editing, you’ll typically see:

  • 2-space tabs: popular in some JavaScript, Ruby, and heavily nested codebases.
  • 4-space tabs: very common default in IDEs and editors, and in many style guides.
  • 8-space tabs: traditional in older terminals and tools, still used in some Unix environments.

Many editors let you choose whether pressing Tab inserts a real tab character or a fixed number of spaces (like 4 spaces).

Why people argue about it

Programmers care because:

  • Mixing tabs and spaces can cause errors in languages that care about indentation, like Python.
  • Different settings make code look misaligned from one machine to another if real tabs are used.
  • Teams often agree on a convention (e.g., “4 spaces, no tabs”) for consistency and readability.

A typical “forum answer” to “how many spaces is a tab?” is:

None. A tab is a tab. It’s its own character, and how many spaces it looks like is up to your editor and settings.

Practical takeaway

  • If you’re writing code: follow the project’s style guide; if none exists, 4 spaces (or a tab that displays as 4 spaces) is a safe default.
  • If you’re in a word processor: the default tab is usually about 0.5 inch, but you can change it in the paragraph or tab settings.

TL;DR: There is no single fixed answer; in most modern setups, a tab appears as 2–8 spaces (often 4), but it’s fundamentally its own character, not a fixed count of spaces.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.