This section describes the primitive functions used to count and insert indentation. The functions in the following sections use these primitives. See Size of Displayed Text, for related functions.
This function returns the indentation of the current line, which is the horizontal position of the first nonblank character. If the contents are entirely blank, then this is the horizontal position of the end of the line.
This function considers invisible text as having zero width, unless
buffer-invisibility-spec specifies that invisible text should
be displayed as ellipsis. See Invisible Text.
This function indents from point with tabs and spaces until column
is reached. If minimum is specified and non-nil, then at
least that many spaces are inserted even if this requires going beyond
column. Otherwise the function does nothing if point is already
beyond column. The value is the column at which the inserted
indentation ends.
The inserted whitespace characters inherit text properties from the surrounding text (usually, from the preceding text only). See Stickiness of Text Properties.
If this variable is non-nil, indentation functions can insert
tabs as well as spaces. Otherwise, they insert only spaces. Setting
this variable automatically makes it buffer-local in the current buffer.