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Just use a capable editor. It's 2014, for heaven's sake!

The problem occurs when you are SSH'ed to a machine you are setting up, or one that is customer owned, you use whatever editor is around to make a quick edit, not realising that the file labeled .conf is actually a YAML file, you hit tab because it makes logical sense and then shit breaks.

No thanks, YAML is a terrible choice for configuration files.

All YAML files are required to begin with "---". If you're aware of what YAML is, and you've seen YAML ebfore, and yet you somehow "aren't aware" that something is a YAML file, you're incompetent.

There is no requirement for a YAML file to begin with "---".

Look at the database.yml files that come with Rails applications, or look at the +MANIFEST file that pkgng requires on FreeBSD.

Those are yaml files, no triple dashes.

Calling me incompetent isn't helping your case either.

If you're connecting to a machine over SSH and you're making enough changes that it's going to be difficult to maintain an indentation scheme, open it up on a local editor with SFTP. Emacs supports it out of the box, and Sublime has an excellent nagware SFTP package in the standard repos.

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