Learning the vi and Vim Editors, 7th Edition

Editing Program Source Code

All of the features discussed so far are of interest whether you are editing regular text or program source code. However, there are a number of additional features that are of interest chiefly to programmers. These include indentation control, searching for the beginning and end of procedures, and using ctags.

The following discussion is adapted from documentation provided by Mortice Kern Systems with their excellent implementation of vi for DOS and Windows-based systems, available as a part of the MKS Toolkit or separately as MKS Vi. It is reprinted by permission of Mortice Kern Systems.

Indentation Control

The source code for a program differs from ordinary text in a number of ways. One of the most important of these is the way in which source code uses indentation. Indentation shows the logical structure of the program: the way in which statements are grouped into blocks. vi provides automatic indentation control. To use it, issue the command:

:set autoindent

Now, when you indent a line with spaces or tabs, the following lines will automatically be indented by the same amount. When you press ENTER after typing the first indented line, the cursor goes to the next line and automatically indents the same distance as the previous line.

As a programmer, you will find this saves you quite a bit of work getting the indentation right, especially when you have several levels of indentation.

When you are entering code with autoindent enabled, typing CTRL-T at the ...