Indenting schema, is there a sort of thing you can load/configure into "=" in vim?

Question

I don't know what vim cannot do, so far, I feel it is so powerful!

I need indent in Normal Mode for c++ code. I found vim is using "=" to that, just visual/mouse select the code and hit "=" key, or doing "gg=G" for all.

The following style is what I need (no indentation after a keyword). It might be ugly, but let's just don't discuss that. I'm using it as an example.

template< class T > class Stack
{
    public:
    Stack(int = default_value);
    Stack()//destructor
    {delete [] values;}
    bool push( T );
    T pop();
    bool isEmpty();
    bool isFull();
    private:
    int size;
    T *values;
    int index;
};

After "=" indenting, I got the following code

template< class T > class Stack
{
    public:
        Stack(int = default_value);
        Stack()//destructor
        {delete [] values;}
        bool push( T );
        T pop();
        bool isEmpty();
        bool isFull();
    private:
        int size;
        T *values;
        int index;

};

Question: Is there a way to configure/change the indentation style/schema behind the "=" operator or Is there a mechanism to load some sort of indentation schema into the "=" in vim?

Thanks

Answer 1

For your specific query (indentation of statements following a C++ scope declaration), you can use Vim's C-indenting and add the h setting to cinoptions:

" Use C-indenting
:set cindent

" Don't indent further after scope declaration
:set cinoptions+=h0

More generally, you can also use either an external program or Vimscript to configure the behaviour of the = command.

Use the 'equalprg' option to specify an external program or the 'indentexpr' option to specify a (Vimscript) indent expression.

For more details, see:

• :help C-indenting
• :help cinoptions
• :help cino-h
• :help =
• :help 'equalprg'
• :help 'indentexpr'
• :help indent-expression