Indent multiple lines quickly in vi

Question

It 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

User · Answer

Do this    vi  vimrc   And add this line   autocmd FileType cpp setlocal expandtab shiftwidth 4 softtabstop 4 cindent   This is only for a cpp file  You can do this for another file type  also just by modifying the filetype

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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

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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 lt  will indent or outdent  is this a word   Voila  The text is moved  empty lines remain empty with no spaces    PS  you can use the   a  z technique to mark a range for any operation  d  y  s     etc   where you might use lines  numbers  or

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

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How to indent highlighted code in vi immediately by a number 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     lt    gt  To set indent to three spaces  type le 3 and press enter  This is what appears     lt    gt le 3 The selected text is immediately indented to three 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 and press the following keys   Vjjjj le 3   Interpretation of what you did   V means start selecting text   jjjj arrows down four lines  highlighting four lines     tells vi you will enter an instruction for the highlighted text   le 3 means indent highlighted text three 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 the spacebar five times   Esc Shift i  All the highlighted text is indented an additional five spaces

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Press  quot SHIFT   v quot  to enter VISUAL LINE mode  Select the text you wish to indent but using either the cursor keys or the  quot j quot  and  quot k quot  keys  To indent right press  quot SHIFT   dot quot    gt  character   To indent left press  quot SHIFT   comma quot    lt  character    Source  https   www fir3net com UNIX General how-do-i-tab-multiple-lines-within-vi html

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To indent every line in a file type  Esc and then G gg

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Use the   command  To indent five lines  5    To mark a block of lines and indent it  Vjj  to indent three 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

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The beauty of Vim s UI is that its consistency  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  lt  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  lt div  and entering    will indent up to the closing  lt  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

User · Answer

Also try this for C-indenting indentation  Do  help   for more information       That will auto-indent the current code block you re in   Or just       to auto-indent the current line

User · Answer

gt   or  gt   indent from current line up to next paragraph   lt   or  lt   same un-indent

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Key presses for more visual people    Enter Command Mode   Escape Move around to the start of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr  Start a block   v Move around to the end of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr   Optional  Type the number of indentation levels you want  0  9 Execute the indentation on the block

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line num start line num end gt    For example   14 21 gt  shifts line number 14 to 21 to one tab   Increase the     symbol for more tabs   For example   14 21 gt  gt  gt  for three tabs

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A big selection would be   gg G   It is really fast  and everything gets indented  -

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A big selection would be   gg G   It is really fast  and everything gets indented  -

User · Answer

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 indent Ctrl   V to start block select Move to the first character of the first line you want to indent Shift   I to enter special insert mode Type as many space tabs as you need to indent to  two for example Press Esc and spaces will appear in all lines   This is useful when you don t want to change indentation 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

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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  gt  a  note that  a  can be substituted for any valid marker name   This is sometimes easier than 5 gt  gt  or vjjj gt

User · Answer

To indent all of the file by four   esc 4G G

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For mac   Open the file using vim vim deploy1 yml  Select lines using Shift    v  and then using  up  or  down  key   Indent selected lines using Shift     gt   or Shift     lt

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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  gt   For example  V5j3 gt  will indent five lines three times - which is 12 spaces if you use four spaces for indents

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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  gt   For example  V5j3 gt  will indent five lines three times - which is 12 spaces if you use four spaces for indents

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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  lt   lt gv  vnoremap  gt   gt gv   It lets you indent your selection as many time as you want

User · Answer

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      lt    gt s       g Or replacing with leading tabs      lt    gt s    t g Brief Explanation     lt    gt  - 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

User · Answer

This answer summarises the other answers and comments of this question  and it 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   gt  gt    Indent line by shiftwidth spaces  lt  lt    De-indent line by shiftwidth spaces 5 gt  gt   Indent 5 lines 5    Re-indent 5 lines   gt     Increase indent of a braced or bracketed block  place cursor on brace first       Reindent a braced or bracketed block  cursor on brace   lt     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   gt i   Increase inner block indent  lt 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 gt  Visually mark and then indent three 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     lt  and   gt  Given a range  apply indentation e g   4 8 gt    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   gt  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  gt  gt    lt  lt      etc  set softtabstop 4    Indent by 4 spaces when pressing  lt TAB gt   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   Indent a code block  Shifting blocks visually Indenting source code  help

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For a block of code            For a selected line  Shift   v select using the up down arrow keys  and then press    For the 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

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Use the   command  To indent five lines  5    To mark a block of lines and indent it  Vjj  to indent three 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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  gt i  which means  indent   gt   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  gt   Or even faster you can do  gt 2j to get   do     line2      line3     line4 done   Note that  gt 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

User · Answer

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 lt  will indent or outdent  is this a word   Voila  The text is moved  empty lines remain empty with no spaces    PS  you can use the   a  z technique to mark a range for any operation  d  y  s     etc   where you might use lines  numbers  or

User · Answer

5   will indent five lines from the current cursor position   So you can type any number before     It will indent the number of lines  This is in command mode   gg G will indent the whole file from top to bottom

User · Answer

For mac   Open the file using vim vim deploy1 yml  Select lines using Shift    v  and then using  up  or  down  key   Indent selected lines using Shift     gt   or Shift     lt

User · Answer

Key presses for more visual people    Enter Command Mode   Escape Move around to the start of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr  Start a block   v Move around to the end of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr   Optional  Type the number of indentation levels you want  0  9 Execute the indentation on the block

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  gt  a  note that  a  can be substituted for any valid marker name   This is sometimes easier than 5 gt  gt  or vjjj gt

User · Answer

Press  quot SHIFT   v quot  to enter VISUAL LINE mode  Select the text you wish to indent but using either the cursor keys or the  quot j quot  and  quot k quot  keys  To indent right press  quot SHIFT   dot quot    gt  character   To indent left press  quot SHIFT   comma quot    lt  character    Source  https   www fir3net com UNIX General how-do-i-tab-multiple-lines-within-vi html

User · Answer

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  lt   lt gv  vnoremap  gt   gt gv   It lets you indent your selection as many time as you want

User · Answer

Also try this for C-indenting indentation  Do  help   for more information       That will auto-indent the current code block you re in   Or just       to auto-indent the current line

User · Answer

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

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Key presses for more visual people    Enter Command Mode   Escape Move around to the start of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr  Start a block   v Move around to the end of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr   Optional  Type the number of indentation levels you want  0  9 Execute the indentation on the block

User · Answer

To indent all of the file by four   esc 4G G

User · Answer

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  gt i  which means  indent   gt   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  gt   Or even faster you can do  gt 2j to get   do     line2      line3     line4 done   Note that  gt 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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

To indent every line in a file type  Esc and then G gg

User · Answer

You can use the 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 a space character at the end of the command - this will be the character we want to have inserted  We can also indent a line with any other text  for example to indent every line in a file with five 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

User · Answer

Also try this for C-indenting indentation  Do  help   for more information       That will auto-indent the current code block you re in   Or just       to auto-indent the current line

User · Answer

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  lt  to unindent once  2 spaces   Type 2 lt  to unindent twice  4 spaces   Type 3 lt  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

User · Answer

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  lt  to unindent once  2 spaces   Type 2 lt  to unindent twice  4 spaces   Type 3 lt  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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

A big selection would be   gg G   It is really fast  and everything gets indented  -

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line num start line num end gt    For example   14 21 gt  shifts line number 14 to 21 to one tab   Increase the     symbol for more tabs   For example   14 21 gt  gt  gt  for three tabs

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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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I don   t know why it s so difficult to find a simple answer like this one     I myself had to struggle a lot to know this  It s very simple    Edit your  vimrc file under the home directory  Add this line  set cindent   in your 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

User · Answer

Also try this for C-indenting indentation  Do  help   for more information       That will auto-indent the current code block you re in   Or just       to auto-indent the current line

User · Answer

You can use the 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 a space character at the end of the command - this will be the character we want to have inserted  We can also indent a line with any other text  for example to indent every line in a file with five 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

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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 three spaces    le without any value or  le 0 will left align with a padding of 0   This works in Vim and gVim

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Use the   command  To indent five lines  5    To mark a block of lines and indent it  Vjj  to indent three 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

User · Answer

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      lt    gt s       g Or replacing with leading tabs      lt    gt s    t g Brief Explanation     lt    gt  - 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

User · Answer

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 indent Ctrl   V to start block select Move to the first character of the first line you want to indent Shift   I to enter special insert mode Type as many space tabs as you need to indent to  two for example Press Esc and spaces will appear in all lines   This is useful when you don t want to change indentation 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

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The beauty of Vim s UI is that its consistency  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  lt  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  lt div  and entering    will indent up to the closing  lt  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

User · Answer

This answer summarises the other answers and comments of this question  and it 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   gt  gt    Indent line by shiftwidth spaces  lt  lt    De-indent line by shiftwidth spaces 5 gt  gt   Indent 5 lines 5    Re-indent 5 lines   gt     Increase indent of a braced or bracketed block  place cursor on brace first       Reindent a braced or bracketed block  cursor on brace   lt     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   gt i   Increase inner block indent  lt 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 gt  Visually mark and then indent three 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     lt  and   gt  Given a range  apply indentation e g   4 8 gt    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   gt  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  gt  gt    lt  lt      etc  set softtabstop 4    Indent by 4 spaces when pressing  lt TAB gt   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   Indent a code block  Shifting blocks visually Indenting source code  help

User · Answer

Key presses for more visual people    Enter Command Mode   Escape Move around to the start of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr  Start a block   v Move around to the end of the area to indent   hjkl uarr  darr  larr  rarr   Optional  Type the number of indentation levels you want  0  9 Execute the indentation on the block

User · Answer

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  gt  a  note that  a  can be substituted for any valid marker name   This is sometimes easier than 5 gt  gt  or vjjj gt

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For a block of code            For a selected line  Shift   v select using the up down arrow keys  and then press    For the 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

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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 three spaces    le without any value or  le 0 will left align with a padding of 0   This works in Vim and gVim

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Do this    vi  vimrc   And add this line   autocmd FileType cpp setlocal expandtab shiftwidth 4 softtabstop 4 cindent   This is only for a cpp file  You can do this for another file type  also just by modifying the filetype

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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  gt  a  note that  a  can be substituted for any valid marker name   This is sometimes easier than 5 gt  gt  or vjjj gt

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How to indent highlighted code in vi immediately by a number 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     lt    gt  To set indent to three spaces  type le 3 and press enter  This is what appears     lt    gt le 3 The selected text is immediately indented to three 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 and press the following keys   Vjjjj le 3   Interpretation of what you did   V means start selecting text   jjjj arrows down four lines  highlighting four lines     tells vi you will enter an instruction for the highlighted text   le 3 means indent highlighted text three 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 the spacebar five times   Esc Shift i  All the highlighted text is indented an additional five spaces

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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

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For who like modern editors to indent selected line with  lt TAB gt  and  lt S-TAB gt   vnoremap  lt TAB gt   gt gv vnoremap  lt S-TAB gt   lt gv  Usage  Hit V for line-wise visual-mode  select lines you want  then hit Tab may be with shift   then indention applies as you want and selection remains

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A big selection would be   gg G   It is really fast  and everything gets indented  -

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5   will indent five lines from the current cursor position   So you can type any number before     It will indent the number of lines  This is in command mode   gg G will indent the whole file from top to bottom

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gt   or  gt   indent from current line up to next paragraph   lt   or  lt   same un-indent

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Use the   command  To indent five lines  5    To mark a block of lines and indent it  Vjj  to indent three 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

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For who like modern editors to indent selected line with  lt TAB gt  and  lt S-TAB gt   vnoremap  lt TAB gt   gt gv vnoremap  lt S-TAB gt   lt gv  Usage  Hit V for line-wise visual-mode  select lines you want  then hit Tab may be with shift   then indention applies as you want and selection remains

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I don   t know why it s so difficult to find a simple answer like this one     I myself had to struggle a lot to know this  It s very simple    Edit your  vimrc file under the home directory  Add this line  set cindent   in your 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

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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

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