Indent multiple lines quickly in vi

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/235839

04-07-2019
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Question

Should be trivial, and it might even be in the help, but I can't figure out how to navigate it. How do I indent multiple lines quickly in vi?

Solution

Use the > command. To indent 5 lines, 5>>. To mark a block of lines and indent it, Vjj> to indent 3 lines (vim only). To indent a curly-braces block, put your cursor on one of the curly braces and use >% or from anywhere inside block use >iB.

If you’re copying blocks of text around and need to align the indent of a block in its new location, use ]p instead of just p. This aligns the pasted block with the surrounding text.

Also, the shiftwidth setting allows you to control how many spaces to indent.

OTHER TIPS

This answer summarises the other answers and comments of this question, and adds extra information based on the Vim documentation and the Vim wiki. For conciseness, this answer doesn't distinguish between Vi and Vim-specific commands.

In the commands below, "re-indent" means "indent lines according to your indentation settings." shiftwidth is the primary variable that controls indentation.

General Commands

>>   Indent line by shiftwidth spaces
<<   De-indent line by shiftwidth spaces
5>>  Indent 5 lines
5==  Re-indent 5 lines

>%   Increase indent of a braced or bracketed block (place cursor on brace first)
=%   Reindent a braced or bracketed block (cursor on brace)
<%   Decrease indent of a braced or bracketed block (cursor on brace)
]p   Paste text, aligning indentation with surroundings

=i{  Re-indent the 'inner block', i.e. the contents of the block
=a{  Re-indent 'a block', i.e. block and containing braces
=2a{ Re-indent '2 blocks', i.e. this block and containing block

>i{  Increase inner block indent
<i{  Decrease inner block indent

You can replace { with } or B, e.g. =iB is a valid block indent command. Take a look at "Indent a Code Block" for a nice example to try these commands out on.

Also, remember that

.    Repeat last command

, so indentation commands can be easily and conveniently repeated.

Re-indenting complete files

Another common situation is requiring indentation to be fixed throughout a source file:

gg=G  Re-indent entire buffer

You can extend this idea to multiple files:

" Re-indent all your c source code:
:args *.c
:argdo normal gg=G
:wall

Or multiple buffers:

" Re-indent all open buffers:
:bufdo normal gg=G:wall

In Visual Mode

Vjj> Visually mark and then indent 3 lines

In insert mode

These commands apply to the current line:

CTRL-t   insert indent at start of line
CTRL-d   remove indent at start of line
0 CTRL-d remove all indentation from line

Ex commands

These are useful when you want to indent a specific range of lines, without moving your cursor.

:< and :> Given a range, apply indentation e.g.
:4,8>   indent lines 4 to 8, inclusive

Indenting using markers

Another approach is via markers:

ma     Mark top of block to indent as marker 'a'

...move cursor to end location

>'a    Indent from marker 'a' to current location

Variables that govern indentation

You can set these in your .vimrc file.

set expandtab       "Use softtabstop spaces instead of tab characters for indentation
set shiftwidth=4    "Indent by 4 spaces when using >>, <<, == etc.
set softtabstop=4   "Indent by 4 spaces when pressing <TAB>

set autoindent      "Keep indentation from previous line
set smartindent     "Automatically inserts indentation in some cases
set cindent         "Like smartindent, but stricter and more customisable

Vim has intelligent indentation based on filetype. Try adding this to your .vimrc:

if has ("autocmd")
    " File type detection. Indent based on filetype. Recommended.
    filetype plugin indent on
endif

References

A big selection would be:

gg=G

It is really fast, and everything gets indented ;-)

Also try this for C-indenting indentation, do :help = for more info:

={

That will auto-indent the current code block you're in.

Or just:

==

to auto-indent the current line.

Key-Presses for more visual people:

Enter Command Mode:
Escape
Move around to the start of the area to indent:
hjkl↑↓←→
Start a block:
v
Move around to the end of the area to indent:
hjkl↑↓←→
(Optional) Type the number of indentation levels you want
0..9
Execute the indentation on the block:
>

In addition to the answer already given and accepted, it is also possible to place a marker and then indent everything from the current cursor to the marker. Thus, enter ma where you want the top of your indented block, cursor down as far as you need and then type >'a (note that "a" can be substituted for any valid marker name). This is sometimes easier than 5>> or vjjj>.

The master of all commands is
gg=G

This indents the entire file!

And below are some of the simple and elegant commands used to indent lines quickly in Vim or gVim.

To indent the current line
==

To indent the all the lines below the current line

=G

To indent n lines below the current line

n==

For example, to indent 4 lines below the current line

4==

To indent a block of code, go to one of the braces and use command

=%

These are the simplest, yet powerful commands to indent multiple lines.

Go to the start of the text

press v for visual mode.
use up/down arrow to highlight text.
press = to indent all the lines you highlighted.

As well as the offered solutions, I like to do things a paragraph at a time with >}

When you select a block and use > to indent, it indents then goes back to normal mode. I have this in my .vimrc file:

vnoremap < <gv

vnoremap > >gv

It lets you indent your selection as many time as you want.

Suppose you use 2 spaces to indent your code. Type:

:set shiftwidth=2

Type v (to enter visual block editing mode)
Move the cursor with the arrow keys (or with h/j/k/l) to highlight the lines you want to indent or unindent.

Then:

Type > to indent once (2 spaces).
Type 2> to indent twice (4 spaces).
Type 3> to indent thrice (6 spaces).
...
Type < to unindent once (2 spaces).
Type 2< to unindent twice (4 spaces).
Type 3< to unindent thrice (6 spaces).
...

You get the idea.

(Empty lines will not get indented, which I think is kind of nice.)

I found the answer in the (g)vim documentation for indenting blocks:

:help visual-block
/indent

If you want to give a count to the command, do this just before typing the operator character: "v{move-around}3>" (move lines 3 indents to the right).

The beauty of vim's UI is that it's consistent. Editing commands are made up of the command and a cursor move. The cursor moves are always the same:

H to top of screen, L to bottom, M to middle
nG to go to line n, G alone to bottom of file, gg to top
n to move to next search match, N to previous
} to end of paragraph
% to next matching bracket, either of the parentheses or the tag kind
enter to the next line
'x to mark x where x is a letter or another '
many more, including w and W for word, $ or 0 to tips of the line, etc, that don't apply here because are not line movements.

So, in order to use vim you have to learn to move the cursor and remember a repertoire of commands like, for example, > to indent (and < to "outdent").
Thus, for indenting the lines from the cursor position to the top of the screen you do >H, >G to indent to the bottom of the file.

If, instead of typing >H, you type dH then you are deleting the same block of lines, cH for replacing it, etc.

Some cursor movements fit better with specific commands. In particular, the % command is handy to indent a whole HTML or XML block.
If the file has syntax highlighted (:syn on) then setting the cursor in the text of a tag (like, in the "i" of <div> and entering >% will indent up to the closing </div> tag.

This is how vim works: one has to remember only the cursor movements and the commands, and how to mix them.
So my answer to this question would be "go to one end of the block of lines you want to indent, and then type the > command and a movement to the other end of the block" if indent is interpreted as shifting the lines, = if indent is interpreted as in pretty-printing.

do this

$vi .vimrc

and add this line

autocmd FileType cpp setlocal expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 cindent

this is only for cpp file you can do this for another file type also just by modifying the filetype...

A quick way to do this using VISUAL MODE uses the same process as commenting a block of code.

This is useful if you would prefer not to change your shiftwidth or use any set directives and is flexible enough to work with TABS or SPACES or any other character.

Position cursor at the beginning on the block
v to switch to -- VISUAL MODE --
Select the text to be indented
Type : to switch to the prompt
Replacing with 3 leading spaces:

:'<,'>s/^/ /g
Or replacing with leading tabs:

:'<,'>s/^/\t/g
Brief Explanation:

'<,'> - Within the Visually Selected Range

s/^/ /g - Insert 3 spaces at the beginning of every line within the whole range

(or)

s/^/\t/g - Insert Tab at the beginning of every line within the whole range

I like to mark text for indentation:

go to beginning of line of text then type ma (a is the label from the 'm'ark: it could be any letter)
go to end line of text and type mz (again z could be any letter)
:'a,'z> or :'a,'z< will indent or outdent (is this a word?)
Voila! the text is moved (empty lines remain empty with no spaces)

PS: you can use :'a,'z technique to mark a range for any operation (d,y,s///, etc) where you might use lines, numbers, or %

>} or >{ indent from current line up to next paragraph

<} or <{ same un-indent

There is one more way that hasn’t been mentioned yet - you can use norm i command to insert given text at the beginning of the line. To insert 10 spaces before lines 2-10:

:2,10norm 10i

Remember that there has to be space character at the end of the command - this will be the character we want to have inserted. We can also indent line with any other text, for example to indent every line in file with 5 underscore characters:

:%norm 5i_

Or something even more fancy:

:%norm 2i[ ]

More practical example is commenting Bash/Python/etc code with # character:

:1,20norm i#

To re-indent use x instead of i. For example to remove first 5 characters from every line:

:%norm 5x

For me, the MacVim (Visual) solution was, select with mouse and press ">", but after putting the following lines in "~/.vimrc" since I like spaces instead of tabs:

set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2

Also it's useful to be able to call MacVim from the command-line (Terminal.app), so since I have the following helper directory "~/bin", where I place a script called "macvim":

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/usr/bin/open -a /Applications/MacPorts/MacVim.app $@

And of course in "~/.bashrc":

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

Macports messes with "~/.profile" a lot, so the PATH environment variable can get quite long.

I didn't find a method I use in the comments, so I'll share it (I think vim only):

Esc to enter command mode
Move to the first character of the last line you want to ident
ctrl-v to start block select
Move to the first character of the first line you want to ident
shift-i to enter special insert mode
type as many spases/tabs as you need to indent to (2 for example
press Esc and spaces will appear in all lines

This is useful when you don't want to change ident/tab settings in vimrc or to remember them to change it while editing.

To unindent I use the same ctrl-v block select to select spaces and delete it with d.

I dont know why its so difficult to find a simple answer like this one...

I myself had to struggle a lot to know this its its very simple

edit your .vimrc file under home directory add this line

set cindent

in you file where you want to indent properly

in normal/command mode type

10==   (this will indent 10 lines from the current cursor location )
gg=G   (complete file will be properly indented)

5== will indent 5 lines from current cursor position. so you can type any number before == , it will indent number of lines. This is in command mode.

gg=G will indent whole file from top to bottom.

:help left

In ex mode you can use :left or :le to align lines a specified amount. Specifically, :left will Left align lines in the [range]. It sets the indent in the lines to [indent] (default 0).

:%le3 or :%le 3 or :%left3 or :%left 3 will align the entire file by padding with three spaces.

:5,7 le 3 will align lines 5 through 7 by padding them with 3 spaces.

:le without any value or :le 0 will left align with a padding of 0.

This works in vim and gvim.

:line_num_start,line_num_end>

e.g.

14,21> shifts line number 14 to 21 to one tab

Increase the '>' symbol for more tabs

e.g.

14,21>>> for 3 tabs

Using Python a lot, I find myself needing frequently needing to shift blocks by more than one indent. You can do this by using any of the block selection methods, and then just enter the number of indents you wish to jump right before the >

Eg. V5j3> will indent 5 lines 3 times - which is 12 spaces if you use 4 spaces for indents

To indent every line in a file type, esc then G=gg

How to indent highlighted code in vi immediately by a # of spaces:

Option 1: Indent a block of code in vi to three spaces with Visual Block mode:

Select the block of code you want to indent. Do this using Ctrl+V in normal mode and arrowing down to select text. While it is selected, enter : to give a command to the block of selected text.
The following will appear in the command line: :'<,'>
To set indent to 3 spaces, type le 3 and press enter. This is what appears: :'<,'>le 3
The selected text is immediately indented to 3 spaces.

Option 2: Indent a block of code in vi to three spaces with Visual Line mode:

Open your file in VI.
Put your cursor over some code
Be in normal mode press the following keys:
```
Vjjjj:le 3
```
Interpretation of what you did:

V means start selecting text.

jjjj arrows down 4 lines, highlighting 4 lines.

: tells vi you will enter an instruction for the highlighted text.

le 3 means indent highlighted text 3 lines.

The selected code is immediately increased or decreased to three spaces indentation.

Option 3: use Visual Block mode and special insert mode to increase indent:

Open your file in VI.
Put your cursor over some code
Be in normal mode press the following keys:

Ctrl+V
```
jjjj
```
(press spacebar 5 times)

Esc Shift+i

All the highlighted text is indented an additional 5 spaces.

To indent all file by 4:

esc 4G=G

I use block-mode visual selection:

Go to the front of the block to move (at the top or bottom).
Press ctrl-v to enter visual block mode.
Navigate to select a column in front of the lines.
Press I (shift i) to enter insert mode.
Type some spaces.
Press ESC. All lines will shift.

This is not a uni-tasker. It works:

In the middle of lines.
To insert any string on all lines.
To change a column (use c instead of I).
yank, delete, substitute, etc...

For block of code {}: = + %
For selected line: Shift + v select using up/down arrow key then press =.
For entire file: gg + = + G

Note: 'gg' means go to line 1, '=' is the indent command, and 'G' moves the cursor to the end of file.

Suppose | represents the position of the cursor in Vim. If the text to be indented is enclosed in a code block like:

int main() {
line1
line2|
line3
}

you can do >i{ which means "indent (>) inside (i) block ({)" and get:

int main() {
    line1
    line2|
    line3
}

Now suppose the lines are contiguous but outside a block, like:

do
line2|
line3
line4
done

To indent lines 2 thru 4 you can visually select the lines and type >. Or even faster you can do >2j to get:

do
    line2|
    line3
    line4
done

Note that >Nj means indent from current line to N lines below. If the number of lines to be indented is large, it could take some seconds for the user to count the proper value of N. To save valuable seconds you can activate the option of relative number with set relativenumber (available since Vim version 7.3).

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