VimTrick: Indenting code

A quick primer on keeping code neat and tidy in Vim

Vim provides == and = as tools to aide in keeping your code formatted and tidy. Double equal can be used to quickly properly indent the current line. Similarly, 10== will indent 10 lines, inclusive of the one you’re one.

Consider this Ruby method, painful to look at it because the indentation is all over the place:

def longest(strings)
strings.sort(&:length)
.last
    end

With our cursor on the d in def, we want to change this method into:

def longest(strings)
  strings.sort(&:length)
    .last
end

There are a few options to achieve the same result:

• 4== will indent the current line, and the next three.

• =ap will indent around the current paragraph. Having no empty lines, this method qualifies as a paragraph.

• =% will indent to the the end of the method. Note this implies the use of the matchit plugin. But % works with common curly brace blocks, parens, etc out of the box.

• V3j= will do a visual select on the current line and the three below and apply indenting to them.

These cover a lot of ground when trying to keep your code tidy.

Lastly, the nuclear option gg=G can be used to indent an entire file.

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