How can I convert 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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