Formatting Code by Block

How we can use Vim to nicely indent C++ code using the 'block' text object

Tags: c++, vim

Ever been inside a code block and want to reformat (via ==) a number of lines but not the whole file and not line by line?

Let’s say you’ve got code like this:

class MyClass
{
public:
    MyClass()
    {
std::cout << "In MyClass constructor" << std::endl;
}

    int somefunc()
    {
for (;;)
    {
std::cout << "breaking" << std::endl;
    }
    }
};

That’s just not ideally formatted, is it? Here’s one cool way to format it:

Put the cursor somewhere inside the outer most block - say on public: or on the blank line between the constructor and the function.
hit: =aB

That will format “a block” and that means it formats the outer block recursively down to the inner most blocks. Not that this is a great demonstration, but it looks like this:

class MyClass
{
  public:
    MyClass()
    {
        std::cout << "In MyClass constructor" << std::endl;
    }

    int somefunc()
    {
        for (;;)
        {
            std::cout << "breaking" << std::endl;
        }
    }
}; 