Shift a block of code to right

Question

Hi all

I am using the VIM.Here is my situation:

1111111111111
2222222222222
3333333333333
4444444444444

Above is the original code, I want to make them like below. After I select these four lines, what should I do to shift them?

    1111111111111
    2222222222222
    3333333333333
    4444444444444

Best Regards,

Answer 1

In command mode, you can use >> to indent a single line. 4>> will indent the current and next three lines.

How they're indented depends on a couple of things like your shiftwidth settings. I always have my shiftwidth and tabstop settings the same to avoid problems:

:set ts=4 sw=4

(for example).

Answer 2

Hit >

That's all.

Answer 3

Use the > key.

Answer 4

Use v to select the block and then press > key.

Answer 5

If you've already selected the four lines in visual mode: > will shift them shiftwidth to the right. After they are shifted, the visual selection will be gone, but you can indent again via . (repeat last command).

If you are normal mode, with your cursor anywhere on the first line:

• >> will indent that line,
• 4>> will indent all four lines,
• >3j will do the same thing in a different way (indent from this line to three lines down),
• >} will indent all of the lines until the end of the paragraph (i.e. to the first empty line, see :help object-motions), and
• >ap will indent all of the lines for a p-aragraph (see :help text-objects), even if your cursor isn't on the first line.

Again, you can repeat these commands via . for deeper indentation levels (or you can set shiftwidth appropriately).

If your file is nicely composed of "paragraphs" (and most of my code and prose is), I think you'll find the ap text-object to be the most common way to work on blocks of text like this. You can also use text-objects to speed up visual selection.