.vimrc configuration for Python

Question

My current .vimrc configuration is below:

set nohlsearch
set ai
set bg=dark
set showmatch
highlight SpecialKey ctermfg=DarkGray
set listchars=tab:>-,trail         


        

Answer 1

The short answer is that your autocmd is missing the BufEnter trigger, so it isn't being fired when you create a new file. Try this instead:

 au BufEnter,BufRead *.py setlocal smartindent cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class

Note that I also changed the set to setlocal. This'll prevent these options from stomping on your other buffers' options.

The "right" way to do what you're trying to do is to add filetype indent on to your .vimrc. This'll turn on the built-in filetype based indentation. Vim comes with Python indentation support. See :help filetype-indent-on for more info.