created 2002 · complexity basic · author RobertKellyIV · version 6.0
If a user would like to paste text into a buffer and have that text indented properly so that the text matches surrounding indents, the following command can be given:
]p
Some users prefer to have all of their text pasted with indenting intact. In order to make this easier, the ]p command can be mapped to the p command, so that whenever p is used, ]p will be executed. The following can be added to the .vimrc to accomplish this:
:nnoremap p ]p :nnoremap <c-p> p
This simply maps normal mode p to what ]p normally does. While ctrl+p now performs just p without the indenting functionality.
Correcting bad indent while pasting
Unfortunately, the ]p command will only adjust indent to match the current line, it will not re-indent the pasted text to correct it according to your current indent rules. You can do this as well, using the special mark, `]. This will jump to the last character of the paste, so you could change the p mapping above to:
:nnoremap p p=`]
This takes advantage of the fact that a paste operation will place the cursor at the beginning of the inserted text, and uses the = operator to indent the entire inserted text.