indent command does not indent matched lines

Question

I have file where I would like to indent all the lines between curly braces:

html {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
font-size: 100%;
font: inherit;
vertical-align: baseline;
}
body {
line-height: 1.5;
color: black;
background: white;
}

I could do this with :g/{/ .+1,/}/-1 > Ex command. However, I also tried to do the same with regular expression :g/\v\{\_s?\zs\_.{-}\ze\}/ >. This will match all the lines between curly braces and I expected > command to indent the matched lines. Instead, it indents the html { and body { lines:

        html {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
font-size: 100%;
font: inherit;
vertical-align: baseline;
}
        body {
line-height: 1.5;
color: black;
background: white;
}

What is the reason for such behavior?

Answer 1

I'm guessing the problem is that :global operates linewise, so the \zs and \ze in your regex don't do anything; They still apply to the line that matched the entire pattern, not the line that the selection starts and ends on. For example, if you have the following text:

foo
bar

and you do

:g/foo\n\zsb/d

This will delete foo rather than deleting bar. Keep in mind, this is mostly a guess, I've never ran into this behavior before, all though it's reproducible. Really though, if you think about it, it makes sense. The definition of the global command is:

:[range]g[lobal]/{pattern}/[cmd]
            Execute the Ex command [cmd] (default ":p") on the
            LINES within [range] where {pattern} matches.

(Emphasis added). foo matches the pattern foo\n\zsbar, so it's irrelevant that you moved the selection forward; the line still matches. On the other hand, there is no possible way for bar to match the pattern foo\n\zsbar.

One thing you could do to make your command simpler is to use the negative global command, e.g. an ex command on every line not matching. That could just be:

:g!/{\|}/>