Get Vim to open new blocks like Sublime Text 2

Question

In sublime text 2 when you:

BLOCK { <Return>

It generates (where the pipe is the cursor):

BLOCK {
  |
}

How can I get Vim to behave this way?

I have autoindent on, and smartindent off because with smartindent it does this on return:

BLOCK {
 |}

To be more clear, I'm specifically looking for 2 returns, moving up a line, and tabbing in (2 soft tabs to be specific). I already have it auto-matching characters like {, (, [ etc.

Answer 1

A simple mapping will work for most purposes:

imap {<cr> {<cr>}<c-o>O

Depending on plugins, some users may need inoremap instead of imap.

Answer 2

Before it was with TextMate, now it's with ST2.

You have basically two paths before you.

• The "dumb" path

  One could come up with dozens of variations of this method: you simply create a mapping that executes the series of key presses needed to reach your goal:

  inoremap {<CR> {<cr><cr>}<C-o>k<tab>
  

  I called it "dumb" but it doesn't mean that you would be dumb to use it: it's low-tech, has no dependencies, is easy to customize and it can be mapped to anything you like.

• The "smart" method

  This method involves the use of a plugin. I use DelimitMate but there are many others, choose your poison.

Answer 3

I did some quick digging for vim addons (which are often the solution to this sort of problem). I don't think I've found what you want: there are a few addons that come close, but nothing that inserts the extra newline before the closing brace.

You could do something like

imap { {<return><return>}<up><tab>

but this will get awkward if you are working in a language that uses braces in other situations. You could instead react to the newline:

inoremap <return> <return><return>}<up><tab>

Of course this will trigger on EVERY entered newline, rather than just those following an opening brace. To get it to check that the brace is the last character of the current line, you can:

• Have a function (in ~/.vimrc or somewhere in ~/.vim/plugin) that looks like

  function! CloseBraceIfOpened()
    if getline(".")[-1:] == '{'
      " insert a space and then delete it to preserve autoindent level
      exec "normal o "
      normal x
      normal o}
      normal k
    else
      normal o
    endif
  endfunction
  

• also do

  inoremap <buffer> <enter> <esc>:call CloseBraceIfOpened()<enter>A
  

Note that this imap is buffer-specific, so that mapping will only apply to the buffer you are in when you run it. To have it apply to all buffers, remove <buffer>.

If you are really ambitious/particular, you can do tests in the function to see if the code in the current line really opens a block.

To get the indentation working the way you want it, turn on the 'autoindent' and 'smartindent' settings.

: set autoindent smartindent

To have it on by default, add

set autoindent smartindent

to ~/.vimrc.

Answer 4

I use the following map:

inoremap {{ {<CR><CR>}<ESC>kcc

so instead of using {<CR> I use this mapping. Besides that I also use the plugin mentioned by romainl, DelimitMate for other mappings with braces.

Answer 5

I had the same problem and delimitMate solves it. After installing it you can enable it with:

let g:delimitMate_expand_cr = 1

There are lot's of hacks that delivers the SublimeText experience. Because I got frustrated I've created a project that includes all those features in a single vim distribution (without the need of installing/compiling external plugins/tools).

You can check it out from here: https://github.com/fatih/subvim