How do I run indent intelligently on bufferRead with vim.

Question

I'd like to run indent on each .c and .h file I open in vim. I've looked at setting equalprg, but I'd rather have it done for me when I open the buffer, so I tried:

autocmd BufReadPost *.[ch] '[,']!indent

This works fine if the file has no syntax errors, but spews error messages from indent into the file if I'm missing a closing brace, say. I haven't done anything with plugins before. Am I better off writing an ftplugin? I don't mind silent failure on errors, but the file should be left pristine in that case. Any hints greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

How about (untested):

autocmd BufReadPost *.[ch] gg=G

Answer 2

If you want to use GNU indent. It sounds like you want something like:

autocmd BufReadPost *.[ch] silent !indent "%"
set autoread

(Also untested) :-)