Indenting comments to match code in vim

Question

I do all my coding in vim and am quite happy with it (so, please, no "use a different editor" responses), but have an ongoing annoyance in that the smartindent feature wants to not indent comments beginning with # at all. e.g., I want

  # Do something   $x = $x + 1;   if ($y) {     # Do something else     $y = $y + $z;   } 

instead of vim's preferred

# Do something   $x = $x + 1;   if ($y) { # Do something else     $y = $y + $z;   } 

The only ways I have been able to prevent comments from being sent to the start of the line are to either insert and delete a character on the line before hitting # (a nuisance to have to remember to do every time) or turn off smartindent entirely (losing automatic indentation increase/decrease as I open/close braces).

How can I set vim to maintain my indentation for comments instead of sending them to the start of the line?

Answer 1

It looks like you're coding in Perl. Ensure that the following are set in your .vimrc:

filetype plugin indent on syntax enable 

These will tell Vim to set the filetype when opening a buffer and configure the indentation and syntax highlighting. No need to explicitly set smartindent since Vim's included Perl syntax file will set it (and any other Perl-specific customizations) automatically.

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Note: having either set smartindent and/or set autoindent in ~/.vimrc may prevent the solution from working. If you're having problems, look for them.

Answer 2

If you are using the "smartindent" indenting option, a fix for your problem is explained in the ":help smartindent" VIM documentation:

    When typing '#' as the first character in a new line, the indent for     that line is removed, the '#' is put in the first column.  The indent     is restored for the next line.  If you don't want this, use this     mapping: ":inoremap # X^H#", where ^H is entered with CTRL-V CTRL-H.     When using the ">>" command, lines starting with '#' are not shifted     right. 

I use "smartindent" and can confirm that the fix described works for me. It tricks VIM by replacing the keystroke for "#" with typing "X", then hitting backspace, then typing "#" again. You can try this yourself manually and see that it does not trigger the auto-outdenting.