Changing Vim indentation behavior by file type

Question

Could someone explain to me in simple terms the easiest way to change the indentation behavior of Vim based on the file type  For instance  if I open a Python file it should indent with 2 spaces  but if I open a Powershell script it should use 4 spaces

User · Answer

For those using autocmd  it is a best practice to group those together  If a grouping is related to file-type detection  you might have something like this    augroup filetype c     autocmd       autocmd FileType c setlocal tabstop 2 shiftwidth 2 softtabstop 2 expandtab      autocmd FileType c nnoremap  lt buffer gt   lt localleader gt c I   lt space gt  lt esc gt  lt s-a gt  lt space gt    lt esc gt  augroup end   Groupings help keep the  vimrc organized especially once a filetype has multiple rules associated with it  In the above example  a comment shortcut specific to  c files is defined   The initial call to autocmd  tells vim to delete any previously defined autocommands in said grouping  This will prevent duplicate definition if  vimrc is sourced again  See the  help augroup for more info

User · Answer

I use a utility that I wrote in C called autotab  It analyzes the first few thousand lines of a file which you load and determines values for the Vim parameters shiftwidth  tabstop and expandtab   This is compiled using  for instance  gcc -O autotab c -o autotab  Instructions for integrating with Vim are in the comment header at the top   Autotab is fairly clever  but can get confused from time to time  in particular by that have been inconsistently maintained using different indentation styles   If a file evidently uses tabs  or a combination of tabs and spaces  for indentation  Autotab will figure out what tab size is being used by considering factors like alignment of internal elements across successive lines  such as comments    It works for a variety of programming languages  and is forgiving for  out of band  elements which do not obey indentation increments  such as C preprocessing directives  C statement labels  not to mention the obvious blank lines

User · Answer

Today  you could try editorconfig  there is also a vim plugin for it  With this  you are able not only change indentation size in vim  but in many other editors  keep consistent coding styles   Below is a simple editorconfig  as you can see  the python files will have 4 spaces for indentation  and pug template files will only have 2      4 space indentation for python files    py  indent style   space indent size   4    2 space indentation for pug templates    pug  indent size   2

User · Answer

Put autocmd commands based on the file suffix in your    vimrc  autocmd BufRead BufNewFile     c   h   java set noic cin noexpandtab autocmd BufRead BufNewFile     pl syntax on   The commands you re looking for are probably ts  and sw

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This might be known by most of us  but anyway  I was puzzled my first time    Doing  set et   set expandtabs  does not change the tabs already existing in the file  one has to do  retab   For example    set et  retab   and the tabs in the file are replaced by enough spaces  To have tabs back simply do    set noet  retab

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You can add  vim files to be executed whenever vim switches to a particular filetype   For example  I have a file    vim after ftplugin html vim  with this contents   setlocal shiftwidth 2 setlocal tabstop 2   Which causes vim to use tabs with a width of 2 characters for indenting  the noexpandtab option is set globally elsewhere in my configuration    This is described here  http   vimdoc sourceforge net htmldoc usr 05 html 05 4  scroll down to the section on filetype plugins

User · Answer

Use ftplugins or autocommands to set options  ftplugin In    vim ftplugin python vim  setlocal shiftwidth 2 softtabstop 2 expandtab  And don t forget to turn them on in    vimrc  filetype plugin indent on    h ftplugin for more information  autocommand In    vimrc  autocmd FileType python setlocal shiftwidth 2 softtabstop 2 expandtab  You can replace any of the long commands or settings with their short versions  autocmd  au setlocal  setl shiftwidth  sw tabstop  ts softtabstop  sts expandtab  et I would also suggest learning the difference between tabstop and softtabstop  A lot of people don t know about softtabstop

User · Answer

I usually work with expandtab set  but that s bad for makefiles   I recently added    autocmd FileType make set noexpandtab   to the end of my  vimrc file and it recognizes Makefile  makefile  and   mk as makefiles and does not expand tabs   Presumably  you can extend this

User · Answer

Personally  I use these settings in  vimrc   autocmd FileType python set tabstop 8 set shiftwidth 2 set expandtab autocmd FileType ruby set tabstop 8 set shiftwidth 2 set expandtab

User · Answer

While you can configure Vim s indentation just fine using the indent plugin or manually using the settings  I recommend using a python script called Vindect that automatically sets the relevant settings for you when you open a python file  Use this tip to make using Vindect even more effective  When I first started editing python files created by others with various indentation styles  tab vs space and number of spaces   it was incredibly frustrating  But Vindect along with this indent file   Also recommend    pythonhelper python match python ifold

User · Answer

edit your    vimrc  and add different file types for different indents e g  I want html rb indent for 2 spaces  and js coffee files indent for 4 spaces     by default  the indent is 2 spaces   set shiftwidth 2 set softtabstop 2 set tabstop 2    for html rb files  2 spaces autocmd Filetype html setlocal ts 2 sw 2 expandtab autocmd Filetype ruby setlocal ts 2 sw 2 expandtab    for js coffee jade files  4 spaces autocmd Filetype javascript setlocal ts 4 sw 4 sts 0 expandtab autocmd Filetype coffeescript setlocal ts 4 sw 4 sts 0 expandtab autocmd Filetype jade setlocal ts 4 sw 4 sts 0 expandtab   refer to  Setting Vim whitespace preferences by filetype

[file] Changing Vim indentation behavior by file type

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