How do I tidy up an HTML file's indentation in VI?

Question

How do I fix the indentation of his huge html files which was all messed up?

I tried the usual \"gg=G command, which is what I use to fix the indentation of code fil

Answer 1

This is my solution that works nicely for opening "ugly" HTML in a nicely spaced way:

vim fileIn.html -c "set sw=2 | %s/>/>\r/ | execute 'normal gg=G' | set nohlsearch | g/^\\s*\$/d"

• The sw command is because my default is 4, which is too high for HTML.
• The next part adds a newline (Vim thinks it's a carriage return, sigh) after each element (>).
• Then re-indent the entire file with =.
• Then unhighlight > (since I have set hlsearch in my vimrc).
• Then remove all empty/whitespace-only lines (see "Vim delete blank lines" for more, also this is double-escaped because it's in the shell).

You can even add | wq! fileOut.html to the end if you don't want to enter Vim at all, but just clean up the file.