I have some Python code that have inconsistent indentation. There is a lot of mixture of tabs and spaces to make the matter even worse, and even space indentation is not preserved.
The code works as expected, but it's difficult to maintain.
How can I fix the indentation (like HTML Tidy, but for Python) without breaking the code?
This question is related to
python
There is also PythonTidy (since you said you like HTML Tidy).
It can do a lot more than just clean up tabs though. If you like that type of thing, it's worth a look.
autopep8 -i script.py
Use autopep8
autopep8
automagically formats Python code to conform to the PEP 8
nullstyle
guide. It uses the pep8
utility to determine what parts of the
nullcode
needs to be formatted. autopep8
is capable of fixing most of the
nullformatting
issues that can be reported by pep8
.
pip install autopep8
autopep8 script.py # print only
autopep8 -i script.py # write file
I have a simple solution for this problem. You can first type ":retab" and then ":retab!", then everything would be fine
The reindent script did not work for me, due to some missing module. Anyway, I found this sed
command which does the job perfect for me:
sed -r 's/^([ ]*)([^ ])/\1\1\2/' file.py
I would reach for autopep8 to do this:
$ # see what changes it would make
$ autopep8 path/to/file.py --select=E101,E121 --diff
$ # make these changes
$ autopep8 path/to/file.py --select=E101,E121 --in-place
Note: E101 and E121 are pep8 indentation (I think you can simply pass --select=E1
to fix all indentation related issues - those starting with E1).
You can apply this to your entire project using recursive flag:
$ autopep8 package_dir --recursive --select=E101,E121 --in-place
Using Vim, it shouldn't be more involved than hitting Esc, and then typing...
:%s/\t/ /g
...on the file you want to change. That will convert all tabs to four spaces. If you have inconsistent spacing as well, then that will be more difficult.
Try Emacs. It has good support for indentation needed in Python. Please check this link http://python.about.com/b/2007/09/24/emacs-tips-for-python-programmers.htm
Try IDLE, and use Alt + X to find indentation.
If you're lazy (like me), you can also download a trial version of Wingware Python IDE, which has an auto-fix tool for messed up indentation. It works pretty well. http://www.wingware.com/
On most UNIX-like systems, you can also run:
expand -t4 oldfilename.py > newfilename.py
from the command line, changing the number if you want to replace tabs with a number of spaces other than 4. You can easily write a shell script to do this with a bunch of files at once, retaining the original file names.
In case of trying to find tool to make your 2-space indented
python script to a tab indented
version, just use this online tool:
If you're using Vim, see :h retab
.
*:ret* *:retab* :[range]ret[ab][!] [new_tabstop] Replace all sequences of white-space containing a <Tab> with new strings of white-space using the new tabstop value given. If you do not specify a new tabstop size or it is zero, Vim uses the current value of 'tabstop'. The current value of 'tabstop' is always used to compute the width of existing tabs. With !, Vim also replaces strings of only normal spaces with tabs where appropriate. With 'expandtab' on, Vim replaces all tabs with the appropriate number of spaces. This command sets 'tabstop' to the new value given, and if performed on the whole file, which is default, should not make any visible change. Careful: This command modifies any <Tab> characters inside of strings in a C program. Use "\t" to avoid this (that's a good habit anyway). ":retab!" may also change a sequence of spaces by <Tab> characters, which can mess up a printf(). {not in Vi} Not available when |+ex_extra| feature was disabled at compile time.
For example, if you simply type
:ret
all your tabs will be expanded into spaces.
You may want to
:se et " shorthand for :set expandtab
to make sure that any new lines will not use literal tabs.
If you're not using Vim,
perl -i.bak -pe "s/\t/' 'x(8-pos()%8)/eg" file.py
will replace tabs with spaces, assuming tab stops every 8 characters, in file.py
(with the original going to file.py.bak
, just in case). Replace the 8s with 4s if your tab stops are every 4 spaces instead.
Source: Stackoverflow.com