how to unindent in vim without leaving edit mode?

Question

Hi all,

I'm writing a lot of python code recently, and i used the tab-to-space mode in vim. I was just wondering how would i unindent in vim without leaving edit mode for example after i finished if...: block. Normally I can just type << to unindent, but it takes too many keystorkes, anyone have a better idea?

Answer 1

Type Ctrl-D on your keyboard, removes one tabstop at a time, works for space-replaced tabs.

Answer 2

Backspace will remove one level of indent at a time.

Answer 3

If you want to increase indentation use ctrl-t.

Answer 4

Put these lines in your .vimrc, and you will be using 4 spaces instead of TAB character, with key indenting and key unindenting properly.

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab
set smarttab
set cindent