How do you auto indent a block in vim

Question

I'm having a hard time figuring this out. I'm typing the following with the help of the AutoClose.vim plugin:

function trim() {|}

| is the position of my cursor. What I want to achieve is as soon as I hit enter the code should look like:

function trim() {
    |
}

Instead, what happens now is:

function trim() {
|}

Answer 1

Try :set cindent. This won't do precisely what you ask, since pressing Enter once only adds one newline, not two, but you should get something like:

function trim() {
    |}

After you type the last line of your function, use Ctrl+D (in Insert mode) to "dedent" (opposite of indent) the } back to the left margin.

You may need to also change the cinkeys option to make sure that the autoindent reacts to the keys you want.