Indenting a bunch of lines in Vim

Question

Is there a way to indent a selection of lines in Vim, like we have in text editors where we select a bunch of lines and press tab (or shift tab) to indent/unindent the selected lines?

I am talking about general indentation and not related to code indentation.

I made a screencast on this topic: http://vimcasts.org/episodes/indentation-commands/ — nelstrom, Feb 25 '10 at 09:03
possible duplicate of [Indent multiple lines quickly in vi](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/235839/indent-multiple-lines-quickly-in-vi) — user, Jul 23 '15 at 23:39

score 39 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:50

39

You can select a set of lines with visual line mode (via Shift + V), and then type

>

and, to dedent,

<

You can also add numeric arguments. Find out you didn't indent enough? Hit gv to re-select your previous selection.

While typing in normal mode, try out Ctrl + T or Ctrl + D to indent or dedent.

edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:50

Peter Mortensen

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answered Feb 25 '10 at 07:25

Peter

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Shouldn't it be 'outdent' instead of 'dedent'? – Vinko Vrsalovic Feb 25 '10 at 07:50
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@Vinko should be, but isn't :) an outdent is a backwards indent; a dedent is an indent undone. perhaps it should really be undent. – Peter Feb 25 '10 at 08:18
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You don't need to re-select the lines to indent more. Just use the dot command: >... will indent four times. – Marius Andersen Feb 28 '10 at 08:24
I blieve that this should be the accepted answer since Brian's solution, despite correct, is harder to implement. – Savas Vedova Jul 27 '13 at 15:57
@SavasVedova but that is not what the concept of '[accepting an answer](http://stackoverflow.com/help/accepted-answer)' means to convey. – Stefan van den Akker Aug 28 '15 at 09:49

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:47

19

Use visual mode as Peter suggests. You can also use X>> where X is the number of lines you want to indent. E.g. 5>> indents five lines from current line and down.

edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:47

Peter Mortensen

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answered Feb 25 '10 at 07:37

Brian Rasmussen

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One of the things I do most, due to Stack Overflow and writing code examples, is `>G`, to indent from the current position to the end of the file. I write in Ruby generally, so, it's actually `>G.` because Rubyists use two-space indent and SO requires four, but YMMV. – the Tin Man Jan 28 '13 at 01:18

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 25 '10 at 11:03

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I use the following mappings to indent/unindent:

vmap <TAB> >gv
vmap <S-TAB> <gv

Use TAB to indent and shift-TAB to unindent the visually selected lines.

If a block is selected Vim indents/unindents what is right of the start of the block.

answered Feb 25 '10 at 11:03

Habi

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score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:51

4

There's a Vim Cast on this topic: Indentation commands

I like Vim Casts. They are informative and pleasant to watch.

edited Oct 29 '19 at 16:51

Peter Mortensen

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answered Feb 25 '10 at 14:43

jps

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Ton van den Heuvel · Answer 5 · 2016-05-04T10:12:07.010

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As suggested by the other answers you can use >. Alternatively, you can automatically correctly indent your code by selecting the set of line in visual mode (using shift+V), and then using =, or using == to indent the current line.

edited May 04 '16 at 10:12

answered Feb 25 '10 at 08:31

Ton van den Heuvel

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Indenting a bunch of lines in Vim

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