Turning off auto indent when pasting text into vim

Question

Unfortunately, I am not an experienced vim user. But, I am making the effort to learn it.

When I paste code into my document from the clipboard, I get extra spaces at the start of each new line:

line
  line
    line

I know you can turn off auto indent but mine doesn't seem to work because I have some other settings conflicting or something (which look pretty obvious in my .vimrc but don't seem to matter when I take them out).

Can someone please show me the way to turn this off when I paste code but still have vim auto indent when I am writing code? Please see my .vimrc file:

set expandtab
set tabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set autoindent
set smartindent
set bg=dark
set nowrap

Many thanks

Answer 1

To turn off autoindent when you paste code, there's a special "paste" mode.

Type

:set paste

Then paste your code. Note that the text in the tooltip now says -- INSERT (paste) --.

After you pasted your code, turn off the paste-mode, so that auto-indenting when you type works correctly again.

:set nopaste

Answer 2

A useful command to have in your .vimrc is set pastetoggle=<F10> or some other button, to easily toggle between paste and nopaste.

Answer 3

I didn't know about set paste. It feels like the right answer. I've been using set noai for years. (noai is an abbreviation for noautoindent)

Answer 4

I usually use :r! cat and then paste ( shift + insert ) the content, and CTRL+D.

No need to enable & disable, direct usage.