How to indent a selection in Vim

May

2009

Submitted by Nick on Wed, 27th May 2009 - 11:22 and has been commented on 2 times.

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Ever had that situation where you've enabled :set paste and pasted in hundred of lines of code into vim only to see it all fully left aligned? I just did… And bugger going over each line and manually indenting it! Want know how to indent a visual block of text?

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So, make a visual selection of what you'd like indented (by pressing v and moving the cursor to mark the selection). Press colon to enter command mode and type "le2". The le command is shorthand for left align. The 2 value is an optional indent setting.

This is what I love about vim; there is always a new trick to make your life easier!

2 Comments

The most recent comment was on Tue, 1st Mar 2011 - 18:54

Another solution

Jul

2010

Submitted by CSÉCSY László (not verified) on Thu, 1st Jul 2010 - 18:59

What about selecting lines instead of chars by pressing V (Shift+V), then having the selection automatically indented by pressing =?

Thank you. your tip was what

Mar

2011

Submitted by kamran (not verified) on Tue, 1st Mar 2011 - 18:54

Thank you. your tip was what I was looking for it for 2 hours!

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