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

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.