Indenting now add suspicious chars to my files when pasting

Question

Following answer I got there to allow >> to indent, I edited my .vimrc to this:

:set shiftwidth=2
:set autoindent
:set smartindent

But now when I copy/paste (via putty), it indents incrementally, by inserting unwanted "tabs".

I copy

#include <iostream>
int main() {
    std::cout << " Hello Vi and Vim!";
    return 0;
}

and when I paste in edit mode, it indent incrementally and it becomes:

#include <iostream>
    int main() {
            std::cout << " Hello Vi and Vim!";
                    return 0;
                        }

It won't happen if I remove my .vimrc. Does it ring any bells?

Answer 1

Yup, you should set the paste option to prevent indentation.

set paste

When you are done, you should then set nopaste.

What happens is that the pasted file is already indented but Vim try to indent it as well, the paste option prevent this.

You can also set a key to turn paste on and off with, e.g.:

set pastetoggle=<C-P>