Vim Indentation and Code Formatting — >>, <<, =, gq

Indentation Commands

Manual Indentation

Command	Action
>>	Indent current line
<<	Unindent current line
>{motion}	Indent lines covered by motion
<{motion}	Unindent lines covered by motion
>ip	Indent inner paragraph
3>>	Indent 3 lines

Visual Mode Indentation

1. Select lines with V + movement
2. > to indent, < to unindent
3. . to repeat the last indent

Auto-Indent

Command	Action
=	Auto-indent (with motion)
==	Auto-indent current line
=ip	Auto-indent inner paragraph
gg=G	Auto-indent entire file
=i{	Auto-indent inside curly braces

Text Formatting

Command	Action
gq{motion}	Format text to textwidth
gqip	Format current paragraph
gqq	Format current line
gw{motion}	Format without moving cursor

Indentation Settings

:set tabstop=4       " Display width of tab character
:set shiftwidth=4    " Width of auto-indent
:set expandtab       " Use spaces instead of tabs
:set autoindent      " Copy indent from current line on new line
:set smartindent     " Smart auto-indentation for C-like languages

The Retab Command

:retab converts between tabs and spaces based on your current settings. :retab! forces the conversion even for existing indentation.