I have searched high-and-low for the answer to this question, and have had no luck. I moved away from an integrated development environment to using VIM. (I've been very happy about it, too!) Most of my code is written in C.
I cannot seem to get my cindent options to work correctly. I want my indent levels to be set at 4 space, but no matter what I do, I get eight spaces.
I have tried a number of different options, without success. Here are what I believe are the applicable settings from my .vimrc:
" Set options for c program formatting
set cindent
set tabstop=4
set expandtab
set softtabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set smartindent
set cino=>4,e4,n4,^4,:4,=4
set colorcolumn=81
Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong? (In case it matters, the other plugins that I am using are crefvim, c.vim, minibufexplorer, and cscope_maps).
Thanks for your help.
I think you've misunderstood the purpose of the various C indent options. Almost all of the values that can be set on cino to modify the indentation are described in the vim manual as "Add N to the prevailing indent" under certain circumstances. (Emphasis mine)
You're getting 8 space indentation because you've told vim that you want a standard indent of 4 spaces (via :set sw=4) and then, for example, you've told cindent that you want another 4 spaces of indentation inside of any braces which appear in the first column (via :set cino=^4).
I loaded your settings, minus the cino bit, into a clean vim. I got plain-vanilla, four-space-indent C formatting thereafter.
Related
I'm trying to enable vim indent folding.
From what I can see online, setting :set fdm=indentshould just work. For me, it doesn't do anything. I can fold manually, but I'm quite strict about indenting code, so indent-folding is ideal. I use spaces to indent (two spaces per level)
My ~/.vimrc looks like this:
set foldmethod=indent
and is definitely being loaded (according to :scriptnames)
Is vim folding in some way dependent on the file type? I'm writing C CUDA, so the extension is .cu.
Do I have to install some sort of plugin for indent folding? I know it's a broad question, but this seems like basic functionality and I have no idea why it's not working.
set nofoldenable turns off folding, it should be set foldenable to enable it
Also set foldlevel=2 sets how many levels of the identified folds should be visible. If you want to specify the depth of indent to use for folding, the setting to use is shiftwidth (e.g., set shiftwidth=2)
Another register I found that needs to be looked at if the fold behavior is "ignoring" what is clearly indented: make sure foldminlines is set to 1 to generate all the folds you might expect.
This, in addition to the shiftwidth setting to something like 2, or even 1 to generate a new fold level with every single space difference.
- E
When I indent/format my code I use tabs for indentation, spaces for alignment. I feel that this is intuitive and very effective at keeping code nicely formatted independent of the tab width of other programmers (as long as they are using monospace).
I like to keep my code nicely formatted for other potential developers and this is one thing about vim that irks me and I want to know if there is a solution. Using the ai format in vim if you have a line that is 2 tabs followed by 9 spaces (assuming 4 space wide tabs) when you enter a new line vim will have the new line be 4 tabs and 1 space. Which is not the desired behavior( I would like it to be 2 tabs and 9 spaces, like the previous line).
My question is, is this even possible? If no, why not? If yes, how do I do it?
Try this in your ~/.vimrc:
set noexpandtab
set copyindent
set preserveindent
set softtabstop=0
set shiftwidth=4
set tabstop=4
It will add spaces though, if your current indentation is not a multiple of tabstop.
Emacs, while editing a C file, forces me to follow a particular indentation. When I press tab on an incorrectly indented line, it corrects the indentation. I want this behaviour from my vim editor. Till now I have done the following :
set cindent
set smartindent
set autoindent
set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set cinkeys=0{,0},:,0#,!,!^F
in my .vimrc file. However, I am not achieving the same emacs-like forced effect as I want.
Is it possible at all in vim ?
'smartindent' is obsolete. There's really no reason you need to have that in your vimrc.
'cindent' overrules 'smartindent', so setting both in your vimrc is pointless. Setting 'cindent' in your vimrc isn't very useful either, since it only really works well on C-like languages.
filetype indent on will enable the filetype-specific indentation plugins (c.f., the indent directory under $VIMRUNTIME). That paired with 'autoindent' at least gives you basic automatic indentation support regardless of what filetype you're editing.
If you want to add indent settings for a specific filetype, you can create your own indent script in ~/.vim/indent/<filetype>.vim, or ~/.vim/after/indent/<filetype>.vim if you're augmenting an existing system-wide indent script.
As the settings you posted show, pressing Ctrlf in insert mode will do what Emacs does when you press Tab. This is described at :help indentkeys-format. 'cinkeys' is used when 'cindent' is enabled and 'indentexpr' is empty. 'indentkeys' is for the reverse. It's just a slight change to modify the setting so Tab can be used in place of/in addition to Ctrlf.
On a final note, I'd recommend learning your way around Vim's help. It's very thorough and easy to use once you figure things out. :help usr_toc is a good place to start for user-level documentation. :help describes some of the basic about navigating the help, how to search for topics, etc.
The == command is what you want, if I understand you correctly. It reindents the current line according to syntax rules.
As for binding it to tab, that's certainly possible, but I have not done that and am not completely sure as to how you can catch the right moment when it should actually insert the tab and when it should reindent.
Personally, I find it less confusing to just press ==. = accepts a range even, so you can go into visual mode, make a selection and tap = and the region will be reindented.
In TeX vim usually screws up my indentation. Mainly when I'm in a displayed equation which I think should look like this:
\[
x=\frac{y}{z}
\]
where the whitespace infront of the x is one tab.
When I start type the equation I type the \[ and \] marks first and then go back between them, typing the tab and then the rest of the equation.
Vim doesn't do anything wrong until I have to use something that incorporates curly braces (\frac{} for example). When I type the closing } vim automatically shifts the indentation for the whole line to the left, which undoes my typed tab.
This is very anoying, how do I disable it?
my .vimrc contains:
"indentation
set smartindent
set autoindent
set tabstop=5
set shiftwidth=5
filetype indent on
I just spent a few hours working through indentation pains with javascript, and the conclusion I came to is don't remove filetype indent on from your vimrc!
This setting provides the best smart indentation for multiple file types. If you're getting bad results with this, there's likely a configuration issue at hand.
File Specific Indent Settings
So if you're like me, you probably had filetype indent on in your vimrc and had no idea what it was doing.
All this setting does is tell vim to look for files with filetype-specific indent rules. There are a few places it looks, but there are probably only two that you'd be interested in.
$VIMRUNTIME/indent/
~/.vimrc/after/indent/
The first place holds the default indent rules that come with vim. If you were to set filetype indent on on a fresh vim installation, this is where all the smart indenting would come from. For example, when you open a file called index.html in would get the rules from $VIMRUNTIME/indent/html.vim.
In my experience, these default rules are pretty darn good, but they can get messed up by other settings.
The second place (the after directory) allows you to add settings that will supercede those in the first place. This is nice because you don't have to edit the default files in order to customize them.
Flavors of Indentation
There are a few different indentation options as you've seen, and they don't all play nice together. From the Vim wiki:
autoindent
'autoindent' does nothing more than copy the indentation from the previous line, when starting a new line. It can be useful for structured text files, or when you want to control most of the indentation manually, without Vim interfering. 'autoindent' does not interfere with other indentation settings, and some file type based indentation scripts even enable it automatically.
I use filetype indent on and set autoindent in my vimrc, since they work well together. I don't have the others set.
smartindent & cindent
'smartindent' automatically inserts one extra level of indentation in some cases, and works for C-like files. 'cindent' is more customizable, but also more strict when it comes to syntax.
'smartindent' and 'cindent' might interfere with file type based indentation, and should never be used in conjunction with it.
When it comes to C and C++, file type based indentations automatically sets 'cindent', and for that reason, there is no need to set 'cindent' manually for such files. In these cases, the 'cinwords', 'cinkeys' and 'cinoptions' options still apply.
Generally, 'smartindent' or 'cindent' should only be set manually if you're not satisfied with how file type based indentation works.
indentexpr
Runs filetype indent scripts found in (vimfolder)\indent\\(indentscripts). It is mentioned in the vim documentation for filetype, alongside the others just mentioned (also, it was the cause of the problem I was having):
Reset 'autoindent', 'cindent', 'smartindent' and/or 'indentexpr' to disable indenting in an opened file.
Troubleshooting
There's a chance that some rogue plugin is changing your indent settings and that's why you're getting poor results. Luckily verbose will tell you which file was the last to change the option in question.
:verbose set autoindent?
:verbose set cindent?
:verbose set smartindent?
:verbose set indentexpr?
You may get a result such as
indentexpr=SomeMessedUpValue
Last set from ~/.vim/bundle/some_plugin/indent/plaintex.vim
If that happens, you can move that file, close and open vim, and see if it fixes your problem.
Turning Off Indent Settings for TeX
Maybe the defaults just aren't doing it for you, and you want to disable the indent settings for TeX, but leave all other file types alone. You can easily do so by setting these values to their defaults in a file in the after directory.
I don't know much about Tex or LaTex, but when I created a file with the .tex extension and ran :filetype it had the filetype as plaintex. Assuming that this is correct, you'd want to create a file, ~/.vim/after/indent/plaintex.vim. In that file:
set autoindent&
set cindent&
set smartindent&
set indentexpr&
This will set all these values to their defaults whenever you open a .tex file.
There seem to be a little mix of terms in your question. In vim the term autoindent points to a special kind of indentation that simply follows the indent level of the previous line (which is quite handy sometimes). To remove it set noautoindent by hand, or write it in your _vimrc.
There are two other automatic kinds of indentation, cindent and smartindent. Similarly, if you wish to disable them go with set nocindent and set nosmartindent
If you look in help (help autoindent, ...) they are all quite nicely explained. Which one you prefer (or don't) is mostly determined by your programming style and habits. So, try them out and see which you like most.
Unfortunatelly, I don't use LaTeX that much anymore, so I'm not familiar with its internal filetype indentation rules.
For anyone else having a similar problem, a solution that worked for me was:
Use :verbose set indentexpr? to find what file was causing the de-indentation
Find where indentexpr is changed (for me it was setlocal indentexpr=GetTeXIndent())
Change that line to setlocal indentexpr& to turn indentexpr off
This removed all de-indenting from brackets, parentheses, and braces.
Remove the lines set autoindent and set smartindent to remove all vim autoindentation.
The following command finally stopped VIM from pretending it knows how to indent files for me and only do what I explicitly tell it:
:setl noai nocin nosi inde=
Courtesy https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_stop_auto_indenting
If you are using the vim-latex plugin, set this option:
let g:tex_indent_brace=0
For other plugins, if you don't want to turn off indentexpr as in the above answers, you can find where indentkeys is set and comment out those lines. This should stop triggering re-indent when you type a closing brace.
:verbose set indentkeys?
I'm currently collaborating with a colleague on a project and we both use Vim to code.
However I've noticed that my code does not align the same way as his does and this causes some extra work on his part to re-indent the code.
So I turn on :set list to see to see the differences in tab space marked with (^I) and line endings marked with $.
For some reason when I type in (:list) mode my text does not indent or even show traces of tab markers (^I) similarly to his code. Why is this?
Here's an example of what I mean:
^I^I$this->greeting('Hello world');$
Whilst my code would show up like this in the same file:
$this->reply('Hello you');$
Notice the uneven space?
These are my vimrc settings:
set expandtab
set softtabstop = 4
set tabstop = 4
set shiftwidth = 4
I hope I'm on the right track, there may be some other problem that I haven't considered. Please do share your knowledge on the matter.
Sincerely,
Why
set expandtab means that typed tabs become spaces. This is fine, as long as you both agree on what a tab is; chances are they're using the Unix- (and, I think for historical reasons, vim-) default set tabstop=8.