CODEWITHSUNDEEP
intellij-idea
Vala
Vala

Reputation: 5674

Can I make IntelliJ IDEAs auto indent ignore previous lines?

Auto-indenting in IntelliJ IDEA seems to automatically takes lines previous to the selection in to consideration. This means that if the indentation is incorrect in the part of the file you're working on (e.g., 3 or 5 spaces where there should be 4, or even worse, a mix of tabs and spaces) it's annoyingly difficult to add correctly indented code.

Both new lines I'm adding and lines I use auto-indent on because I've changed them anyway get messed up like this. Since the file I'm working on is being worked on by someone else as well on another branch, I really don't want to modify over a third of the file just to indent everything correctly, but I would still like the lines that I'm actually modifying/adding to be correct - I don't see any reason to perpetuate the error when it's not necessary.

Currently the best mechanism for fixing it I've found is to manually do the spaces on a line and go from there, but it's really quite annoying, especially since I can't use the tab key or IntelliJ will immediately move to the incorrect indentation. It's barely better than copy/pasting the text to Sublime Text, fix the indentation there and paste it back without formatting.

My apologies if this has already been asked, I've tried to search for it, but it's very hard to search for this as there's so many auto-indent questions.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 321

Answers (1)

Javaru
Javaru

Reputation: 32026

IntelliJ IDEA recently added a feature (in v14 or 1v4.1 if I recall) where it will detect indentation that is different from your settings. It will honor those indentations (in order to keep the file consistent). Usually as soon as you start editing the file, you get a banner, although that can be turned off. The banner looks like this:

enter image description here

This allows you to modify this setting on a per file basis, or turn it off completely (i.e. the "Show Settings" option).

I suspect this feature is what is causing you the issue. I am not sure how it handles a case where a file has mixed indentation (e.g. most of the file is 4, but some sections are 3 or 5 spaces). You can try turning this feature off in Settings > Editor > Code Style > "Detect and use existing file indents for editing"

Upvotes: 0

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