How do I fix the indentation of an entire file in Vi?

Question

In Vim, what is the command to correct the indentation of all the lines?

Often times I\'ll copy and paste code into a remote terminal and have the whole thing messed

Answer 1

:set paste is your friend I use putty and end up copying code between windows. Before I was turned on to :set paste (and :set nopaste) copy/paste gave me fits for that very reason.

Answer 2

For XML files, I use this command

:1,$!xmllint --format --recover - 2>/dev/null

You need to have xmllint installed (package libxml2-utils)

(Source : http://ku1ik.com/2011/09/08/formatting-xml-in-vim-with-indent-command.html )

Answer 3

Just go to visual mode in vim , and select from up to down lines after selecting just press = , All the selected line will be indented.

Answer 4

1G=G. That should indent all the lines in the file. 1G takes you the first line, = will start the auto-indent and the final G will take you the last line in the file.

Answer 5

=, the indent command can take motions. So, gg to get the start of the file, = to indent, G to the end of the file, gg=G.

Answer 6

Before pasting into the terminal, try :set paste and then :set nopaste after you're done. This will turn off the auto-indent, line-wrap and other features that are messing up your paste.

edit: Also, I should point out that a much better result than = indenting can usually be obtained by using an external program. For example, I run :%!perltidy all the time. astyle, cindent, etc. can also be used. And, of course, you can map those to a key stroke, and map different ones to the same keystroke depending on file type.