Vim tip 2: indent/unindent lines

Normal mode

• >> indent the current line
• 3>> indent the current line and two lines below (same as 2>j)
• >k indent the current line and the line above (same as 1>k or >1k)
• << unindent the current line
• 5<< unindent the current line and four lines below (same as 4<j or <4j)
• 2<k unindent the current line and two lines above (same as <2k)
• = auto indent code, use motion commands to indicate the portion to be indented
  • =4j auto indents the current line and four lines below
  • =ip auto indents the current paragraph

You can use any motion command with > and <. For example, >} indents till the end of the paragraph.

Visual mode

• > indent the visually selected lines once
• 3> indent the visually selected lines three times
• < unindent the visually selected lines once
• = auto indent code

Consider the following unindented code:

for(i=1; i<5; i++)
{
for(j=i; j<10; j++)
{
statements
}
statements
}

Here's the result after applying vip= (you can also use =ip if you prefer Normal mode).

for(i=1; i<5; i++)
{
    for(j=i; j<10; j++)
    {
        statements
    }
    statements
}

Indentation depends on the shiftwidth setting.

See :h shift-left-right, :h = and :h 'shiftwidth' for documentation.

Video demo:

See also my Vim Reference Guide and curated list of resources for Vim.