EmacsWiki: Auto Indentation (original) (raw)

Auto-indent as you type

Aggressive Indent does this.

Auto-indent new lines

NOTE: Recent changes, I think during Emacs 24.3, have swapped effects of RET and C-j, so RET typically does newline-and-indent.

If you want automatic indentation, try to use C-j instead of RET for a while. C-j usually runs newline-and-indent. If you really like it, you might want to bind it to RET. Add something along the following lines to your .emacs:

(add-hook 'lisp-mode-hook '(lambda () (local-set-key (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)))

Replace lisp-mode-hook with the appropriate hook. Note that for any mode derived from c-mode, the hook c-mode-common-hook will do the trick.

If you feel squeamish about using anonymous functions in your hooks, the following will work just as well:

(defun set-newline-and-indent () (local-set-key (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)) (add-hook 'lisp-mode-hook 'set-newline-and-indent)

On the other hand, this thing is a little bit cleaner and works with most modes:

(define-key global-map (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)

For some programming languages, e.g., Fortran, using reindent-then-newline-and-indent instead of newline-and-indent may be clearer. Incidentally, f90-mode (for Fortran 90, Fortran 95, etc.) is one in which redefining the key in the global-map does not work. One must write something like:

(add-hook 'f90-mode-hook (lambda () (local-set-key (kbd "RET") 'reindent-then-newline-and-indent)))

If you want to autoindent file when save or visit, try indent-file.el – coldnew

The indent-file.el saves every time you visit a file. In addition you get your buffer untabbified and all the trailing whitespace removed. I don’t like emacs saving files every time I visit them. I created a minor mode that autoindents on save or visit as well as autoindentation in general. In theory, emacs “pretends” that no such change occurred (its just between you and emacs). It is in AutoIndentMode – MatthewFidler

See also CleanAutoIndent – indentation without abandoned trailing white spaces

Auto-indent current and new lines

electric-indent-mode will indent the current line and new ones when you type certain “electric” characters or actions; pressing Enter, for example, will re-indent the current line if necessary, add a new one and indent it; adding a closing bracket (”}”) will automatically match the indentation of the opening pair (reducing identation if required), etc.

You can call (electric-indent-mode 1) in your .emacs or customize-variable it to activate it permanently.

Seem that electric-indent-mode doesn’t work properly with python-mode. You can use this snippet:

(defun electric-indent-ignore-python (char) "Ignore electric indentation for python-mode" (if (equal major-mode 'python-mode) 'no-indent nil)) (add-hook 'electric-indent-functions 'electric-indent-ignore-python)

(defun set-newline-and-indent () "Map the return key with `newline-and-indent'" (local-set-key (kbd "RET") 'newline-and-indent)) (add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'set-newline-and-indent)

targzeta

Auto-indent yanked (pasted) code

“In TextMate, pasted lines are automatically indented, which is extremely time-saving. This should be fairly straightforward to implement in Emacs, but how?”

The following code (inspired by this post) accomplishes this beautifully:

(dolist (command '(yank yank-pop)) (eval `(defadvice ,command (after indent-region activate) (and (not current-prefix-arg) (member major-mode '(emacs-lisp-mode lisp-mode clojure-mode scheme-mode haskell-mode ruby-mode rspec-mode python-mode c-mode c++-mode objc-mode latex-mode plain-tex-mode)) (let ((mark-even-if-inactive transient-mark-mode)) (indent-region (region-beginning) (region-end) nil))))))

Just put the above in your .emacs file and enjoy automatic indentation of yanked text in the listed programming modes.

Fall back to default, non-indented yanking by preceding the yanking commands with C-u. (To add your own modes, check the value of the major-mode variable (C-h v or M-x describe-variable) and add it to the list.)

Alternatively, you may define a separate yank-and-indent command as such:

(defun yank-and-indent () "Yank and then indent the newly formed region according to mode." (interactive) (yank) (call-interactively 'indent-region))

and then bind it as you see fit, e.g., (global-set-key "\C-y" 'yank-and-indent). However, note that the defadvice method is recommended if you use modes such as CuaMode.

Another simple defadvice for e.g. html-mode is the following:

(defadvice yank (around html-yank-indent) "Indents after yanking." (let ((point-before (point))) ad-do-it (when (eq major-mode 'html-mode) (indent-region point-before (point))))) (ad-activate 'yank)

Normally, killing the newline between indented lines doesn’t remove any extra spaces caused by indentation. That is, placing the cursor (symbolized by []) at

    AAAAAAAAAA[]
    AAAAAAAAAA

and pressing C-k (bound to kill-line) results in

    AAAAAAAAAA[]        AAAAAAAAAA

when it might be more desirable to have

    AAAAAAAAAA[]AAAAAAAAAA

which is what would have happened if the lines were not indented.

The following command, kill-and-join-forward, accomplishes this:

(defun kill-and-join-forward (&optional arg) (interactive "P") (if (and (eolp) (not (bolp))) (progn (forward-char 1) (just-one-space 0) (backward-char 1) (kill-line arg)) (kill-line arg)))

It may be inserted into .emacs and bound to C-k (e.g., (global-set-key "\C-k" 'kill-and-join-forward)). In conjunction with the code above for automatic indentation of yanked text, this reduces the need to press <tab> in order to re-indent misaligned lines.

Alternatively, defadvice may be used to alter the kill-line command itself:

(defadvice kill-line (before check-position activate) (if (and (eolp) (not (bolp))) (progn (forward-char 1) (just-one-space 0) (backward-char 1))))

This affects all modes. Checking the value of the major-mode variable allows for filtering:

(defadvice kill-line (before check-position activate) (if (member major-mode '(emacs-lisp-mode scheme-mode lisp-mode c-mode c++-mode objc-mode latex-mode plain-tex-mode)) (if (and (eolp) (not (bolp))) (progn (forward-char 1) (just-one-space 0) (backward-char 1)))))

(delete-indentation t) & Viper’s J in vi-mode do exactly that, except that

M-^ (delete-indentation) does the same thing, except that point can be anywhere on the second line.

Here’s the doc of delete-indentation:

Join this line to previous and fix up whitespace at join. If there is a fill prefix, delete it from the beginning of this line. With argument, join this line to following line.

Cheers! – SebastienRoccaSerra

Yes, but you can only use delete-indentation to join lines (and the original kill-line command only to kill them). The above tip is admittedly a little inspired by TextMate, which tends to use the same keys for multiple things (depending on context). The kill-and-join-forward command is essentially an indentation-ignoring version of kill-line: it either joins lines (by killing the newline character plus any spaces) or kills them. I find that my editing is speeded up by the use of such “general-purpose” commands. (Another example is your brilliant smart-tab command.)

I modified kill-and-join-forward command a little – it work almost as the original and uses standard delete-indentation function.

(defun kill-and-join-forward (&optional arg) "If at end of line, join with following Deletes whitespace at join." (interactive "P") (if (and (eolp) (not (bolp))) (delete-indentation t) (kill-line arg)))

That’s indeed more elegant 😊 (I’ve edited the docstring a little so that the first line stands on its own when calling M-x apropos.) How does it differ from the original behavior?

I did this to it:

(defun kill-and-join-forward (&optional arg) "If at end of line, join with following Deletes whitespace at join." (interactive "P") (if (and (eolp) (not (bolp))) (progn (delete-indentation t) (if (looking-at " $") (delete-char 1))) (kill-line arg)))

so that when you’re killing a whole bunch of lines you don’t have to switch between C-k and C-d. I’m kind of lousy with elisp, though, and it seems really hacky compared to some of the other ways of doing things on this page. Is there something better I should have done instead of that progn?

If you don’t have a non-‘nil’ ‘fill-prefix’, then just ‘C-k M-SPC’. – DrewAdams

That leaves one space between the lines, which may or may not be what you want.

CategoryIndentation