How to fold to a specific level in Vim across an entire file at once?

Question

I want to push one button in Vim and fold all the code so only code up to a specific (and variable) indent level is showing. Very useful when I want to only see method names for example and not their indented routines.

The “Vim: Fold top level folds only” question has a solution to an indent level, but it requires an environment set each time you change levels.

When my cursor is at an indent level (say level 2), I want the entire file to fold to that indent level across all methods.

Is this built into Vim somewhere? Does anyone know of a good plugin that does this?

Answer 1

Configure folding to be defined by indentation:

:setl foldmethod=indent

and try the following command:

:let &l:foldlevel = indent('.') / &shiftwidth

To quickly access this command, create a mapping for it as follows:

:nnoremap <silent> <leader>z :let&l:fdl=indent('.')/&sw<cr>

Answer 2

No need of a plugin, it is builtin in Vim.

'foldlevel' (or shorter 'fdl') and 'foldnestmax' ('fdn') seems to be what we were looking for. You only have to set the 'foldmethod' (or shorter 'fdm') and a 'foldnestmax' (or 'fdn') in you .vimrc file:

set foldmethod=indent foldlevelstart=2 foldnestmax=2

OR the shorter version:

set fdm=indent fdls=2 fdn=2

Then you can change the fold level with direct commands: zm or zr.