I have always been one to replace TABs in VIM with x amount of spaces (usually 4).
Four lines I almost always use in my .vimrc config file are:
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
syntax on
Basically, there are moments when I NEED to use a single TAB (such as Makefiles), and I don't know how else to work around that other than leaving the file, editing my .vimrc, and then reloading the file of interest.
That said, what is the quickest way (from within VIM) to revert it back to using TABS, and then reverting back to my original settings? I'm looking for the least-hassle, least-keystrokes solution.
VIM will automatically enable the TAB for a makefile, assuming you name it "makefile," as opposed to "Makefile." Not sure why VIM still doesn't detect the type with a lower-uppercase difference, but such is life. (#Sedrik)
That aside, other alternative solutions are:
Filetype Binding (#ThorstenS #tungd):
autocmd FileType make setlocal noexpandtab
RealTime Switch (#ThorstenS):
Assuming the .vimrc configuration mentioned in the question, do:
:set noet (to switch from spaces to TAB)
and :set et (to switch back)
Just use the magical escape key available in insert mode.
On the *NIX's it is ^V by default when you are in insert mode. On Windows, you need to find out what the magical escape character is - ^V is taken for something else; I think it may be ^Q or ^S?
So! In your makefile:
this: this.c
<C-V><Tab>cc this.c
where the usual meanings apply:
means hit ctrl-V (you should see a ^ hiding away under the cursor)
- hit the tab key. Bingo.
Works for me.
Note: if you use vim settings or startup code which smashes tabs as you read a file, this obviously is a short-term fix. I prefer to learn how to use the retab command to ensure a file is tab-clean, because I don't like a file to be touched unless I consciously choose to do so.
Just type set noexpandtab . Perhaps you bind this to a function key.
Only this configuration helped me solve this problem.
filetype plugin indent on
filetype detect
autocmd FileType make set noexpandtab
Vim defaults to tabstop=8 and noexpandtab, so the defaults are well suited to working with Makefiles. If your .vimrc uses custom options for tabstop, expandtab, etc., one simple solution is to bypass your .vimrc while working with Makefiles.
From the manpage (emphasis mine):
-u {vimrc} Use the commands in the file {vimrc} for initializations. All the other initializations are skipped. Use this to edit a special kind of files. It can also be used to skip all initializations by giving the name "NONE". See ":help initialization" within vim for more details.
Since I can never remember the necessary flag/value/formatting, I've created a Bash alias which remembers for me: alias vimnone='vim -u NONE'
You can create a custom configuration per file type.
mkdir -p ~/.vim/after/indent
echo 'set noexpandtab' >> ~/.vim/after/indent/make.vim
Basically, here we created a new indent configuration for makefiles that will be loaded after other scripts.
source
Related
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?
Several users in this epic question put the following in the .vimrc:
" Necesary for lots of cool vim things
set nocompatible
But is it really necessary? From the docs:
'compatible' 'cp'
boolean (default on, off when a |vimrc| or |gvimrc| file is found)
If set nocompatible is going in a .vimrc, that means that a .vimrc file exists, seemingly making it pointless.
If it is the system-wide vimrc, this option won't be off. So, if you're changing the system-wide vimrc and you want it, you need to set it.
From the documentation section *compatible-default* (emphasis mine):
When Vim starts, the 'compatible'
option is on. This will be used when
Vim starts its initializations. But
as soon as a user vimrc file is found,
or a vimrc file in the current
directory, or the "VIMINIT"
environment variable is set, it will
be set to 'nocompatible'.
Another difference is that explicitly setting 'nocompatible' overrules calling vim with the -C flag.
In any other scenario, yes, setting 'nocompatible' in your vimrc is a noop.
In the end I think it's just a matter of "better safe than sorry".
Many people share their .vimrc files on GitHub and I sometimes will test out settings without replacing my .vimrc file. vim allows me to do this with the -u flag.
vim -u test_vimrc
From vim ":help nocompatible"
(Note: This doesn't happen for the system-wide vimrc or gvimrc file,
nor for a file given with the |-u| argument).
This means that if you share your .vimrc with someone and they use -u flag to load your file, vim won't be configured the same as if the file were named .vimrc and located in your home directory.
I was using vim in Cygwin on a Windows VM and every time I was in Insert Mode, pressing arrow keys would result in vim printing "A", "B", "C" or "D" on the screen instead of scrolling. I found a forum that said putting vim in nocompatible mode would fix it. Thankfully, it did.
I put "set nocompatible" in my ~/.vimrc file and the problem remains gone. So perhaps it's not 100% useless.
Based on what Johnny pointed out above, I was simply astonished when I just found THIS out:
$ cat /usr/share/vim/vimrc.tiny
" Debian system-wide default configuration Vim
set runtimepath=~/.vim,/var/lib/vim/addons,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles,/usr/share/vim/vim74,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/after,/var/lib/vim/addons/after,~/.vim/after
set compatible
ARGH!!!
No I did NOT expect that.
Debian (or Debian Unstable aka Ubuntu) indeed DOES put up a nightmare to their users by overriding the default setting by set compatible.
I hope that you will now know why when you're coming from FreeBSD, the first thing you would have to do is override the system-wide setting by putting a set nocompatible into your own ~/.vimrc. Because otherwise you'd just produce letters instead of being able to move the cursor the way you've been used to.
I think this is a horrid idea. In other words, this set compatible line ought to be removed from the system-wide vimrc.tiny in both Debian and Ubuntu, because it will annoy new users who are not (yet) as smart as knowing how to get the cursor keys working.
It's things like these that force them to nano and others because of such entirely pointless blockers!
I would really want to talk with the dude who once propagated this change to the system-wide resource file in Debian. And maybe also to the people who acknowledged his change to the fullest.
Johnny is right: on your private PC, you may remove said line from the system-wide .vimrc (if there), and touch an empty .vimrc on your $HOME. Thanks so much for pointing that out, way less clutter again. Note that you MUST have that ~/.vimrc (even if empty!) as otherwise you will not be able to use the cursors without explicitly putting in set nocompatible.
got the same problem on using -u vimrc option, even doing set nocompatible was misbehaving with some of my older setting, after some search i found one compactible version that works for me:
" Avoid side-effects when nocompatible has already been set.
if &compatible
set nocompatible
endif
this avoid re-setting of nocompatible flag when it is already set.
vim :help nocompatible shows conditions when it set/resets the options value, scroll to that table of options and values, for quick reference, conditions that effect this behaviour are:
Option is set to the value given in {set value} when 'compatible' is
set.
Option is set to the value given in {set value} when 'compatible' is set AND is set to its Vim default value when 'compatible' is
unset.
Option is NOT changed when setting 'compatible' but IS set to its Vim default when 'compatible' is unset.
I use vim (primary so that I can work on plain ssh terminal - still uncomfortable with Emacs non-gui version) but most of my colleagues in the organization use emacs. So using CVS, we face indentation inconsistency issues (tabs becoming spaces, number of tabs/spaces, code layout etc).
Is there a way I can make VIM indent EXACTLY as EMACS. (similar to the default emacs profile my colleagues use).
(Most importantly, I want vim's C++ and TCL indentation schemes to match that of emacs).
regards,
JP
I don't know if there's a way to directly import Emacs indentation settings into vim, but you can probably configure the same behavior in vim itself:
set expandtab will convert tabs to spaces
set autoindent will keep indentation level from previous line
set shiftwidth=4 will affect block indentation with >> and <<
set softtabstop=4 sets the length of soft tab in spaces
set tabstop=8 sets the width of tab character
This is properly explained in vim wiki.
When you need filetype-specific indentation you have two options:
Set autocmd to change indentation on file read and file creation:
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.py,*pyw,*.html,*.js set shiftwidth=4 will set shiftwidth for *.py files.
Configure filetype plugin, create name.vim scripts inside .vim/ftplugin folder for specific file types and set the described variables there. This is also described in proper detail in vim wiki.
Regarding specialized indenting for c++ and TCL there is some special stuff that applies in aditon to all the other setting info that's been suggested. Vim has special indenting rules defined in code for different languages. Some of this is found is found in the /indent directory of the vim installation, where there is a separate file for each filetype. For more information on how this works read the help for 'indentexpr'.
The c indenting -- and I think also the indenting for c++ -- is mostly defined in Vim source-code, and has a zillion options that you can set, plus is specially configurable in c.vim or c++.vim indent file. Read help for 'cindent' and 'c-indenting' for more help on that.
In short, the tcl.vim file controls special indenting for tcl files. If you want to revise how indenting works with tcl you would want to alter the main function in that file. The c/c++ indenting is largely controlled by Vim internals but with lots of different option flags. You can control c/c++ indenting by configuring the options the way you want them and/or by writing a function for the indent file in /indent directory. (I believe there is no c++ file in /indent directory, not sure if c.vim is file to edit there, or whether you need to create new c++.vim file. I think it's the c.vim file that would be used. which is basically an empty shell in standard Vim install, but you can read other *.vim indent files to get the idea of how they work.
Here's as extract of some options concerning indentation from .vimrc:
set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set autoindent
set smartindent
All options are nicely described in vim help:
:help smartindent
:help autoindent
UPD: also for C-like languages you may consider :help C-indenting
I have tried the usual approaches, and have read :help tex.vim
(see : http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html )
I've taken a brief look at syntax/tex.vim, but can't see how to disable it without rebuilding vim without folding. I'm sick of hitting 'zE'.
Lines I've tried in my .vimrc:
set foldlevel=manual
set foldlevelstart=99
let g:tex_fold_enabled=0
Just noticed that there are variables to control folding in vim-latex-suite, at least as of v1.6 of the plugin. The functionality is documented here:
http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/documentation/latex-suite.html#latex-folding
In short you should be able to change three global variables to get rid of all folding:
:let Tex_FoldedSections=""
:let Tex_FoldedEnvironments=""
:let Tex_FoldedMisc=""
That should get rid of all folding. If you want to disable some folding but not all then you can control things by setting the appropriate values for each variable, as described in the documentation link above. Hope that helps.
What about
autocmd Filetype tex setlocal nofoldenable
The folding functionality all seems to located in folding.vim file of latex-suite distribution. This file is referenced in line 825 of my main.vim file in the latex-suite folder of the ftplugin folder. That line reads:
exe 'source '.fnameescape(s:path.'/folding.vim')
Comment out that line and, as far as I can tell, it strips out all the folding in latex-suite plugin. I don't think it affects anything else, but I haven't checked.