How can I convert leading spaces to tabs in Vim or Linux?

Using Vim to expand all leading spaces (wider than 'tabstop'), you were right to use retab but first ensure 'expandtab' is reset (:verbose set ts? et? is your friend). retab takes a range, so I usually specify % to mean “the whole file”.

:set tabstop=2      " To match the sample file
:set noexpandtab    " Use tabs, not spaces
:%retab!            " Retabulate the whole file

Before doing anything like this (particularly with Python files!), I usually set 'list', so that I can see the whitespace and change.

I have the following mapping in my .vimrc for this:

nnoremap    <F2> :<C-U>setlocal lcs=tab:>-,trail:-,eol:$ list! list? <CR>

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