Have emacs automatically indent the whole code after it is all written

emacs

My emacs is set up to automatically indent my code as I write it and also re-indent things correctly if I push tab on any line that got misaligned somehow (usually because I changed the code). I am wondering, though, if there is any command in emacs that would allow me to take an entire file (with a code written in it) and indent the whole thing automatically the same way it normally indents my code real time as I write it without me having to go through and push tab on every line of the file?

I suppose I could define a macro that tabs and then advances to the next line and repeat that macro for the length of my file. I am wondering though if there is any command in emacs or some other feature that would do this automatically.

Best Answer

You can indent the region, to do this for the whole buffer:

mark whole buffer with C-x h (or M-x mark-whole-buffer)
run indent region with C-M-\ (or M-x indent-region)

Related Solutions

Scrolling on very long files (1M+ lines) on Emacs

The commands beginning-of-buffer (C-home or M-<) and end-of-buffer (C-end or M->) take a numeric argument. If the argument is N, then the command takes you N/10 of the way. (With some rounding: these commands take you to the beginning of a line.) For example, M-1 M-> goes to the 90% position in the buffer, i.e. around line 900000 in a million-line buffer.

For more precise control, you can scroll to the end, note the line number, and use M-g g (goto-line) to reach a particular line number, e.g. ESC 9 0 0 0 ESC g g to go to line 9000.

emacs – Removing the Last n Characters from Every Line in an Emacs Buffer

You can use the same replace-regex approach to remove as the append case, just prefix the end-of-line regex meta-character with an any-character meta-character:

M-< M-x replace-regex RET .$ RET RET

To replace multiple chars, you can, in a pedestrian fashion, start prepending .? (one optional any-char) to your regex:

M-< M-x replace-regex RET .?.$ RET RET

or, more elegantly, you can use in interval-style notation to indicate up to n any-chars before the end-of-line, in the following example, n=2:

M-< M-x replace-regex RET \{,2\}$ RET RET

There's more on regex syntax under RegularExpression at EmacsWiki

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Scrolling on very long files (1M+ lines) on Emacs

emacs – Removing the Last n Characters from Every Line in an Emacs Buffer

Related Question