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 selec

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.