from the desk of stinkpot

block indent / dedent in emacs

January 7th, 2007 by Lawrence David

to indent or dedent a block of text in emacs, first set a markpoint:

C-space

move the cursor to the end of the block, and then hit:

C-c->

to indent or

C-c-<

to dedent.  Thanks to Chad Netzer for that hint!

Posted in Emacs | 7 Comments »

if that was helpful ...

check out the other tips and tricks i've compiled on these pages. you might learn something else interesting!

7 Responses to “block indent / dedent in emacs”

1. on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:47 am   Rob Stewart

   FYI: The opposite of “indent” is “outdent,” not “dedent.”

2. on 29 Oct 2007 at 3:07 pm   Victor Trapani

   It did not work for me in putty

3. on 04 Dec 2007 at 1:51 pm   Ghen Saito

   Try this.

   Select region using C-space
   C-x-TAB to indent the region

4. on 25 Jul 2008 at 4:05 am   paan

   I’m kindda late since the last comment was in 2007 but this is just great!!

   This is way better than C-i on each line….

5. on 07 Sep 2008 at 8:41 am   wisrhvma ejlivk

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6. on 12 Mar 2009 at 9:53 am   Mike

   Awesome, thanks!

7. on 17 Sep 2010 at 2:37 pm   Michael Daily

   Lawrence’s initial method works generally, but only in certain modes. For example, it works in python-mode but not text-mode. So the trick is to change your buffer to python-mode, do the indent using C-c + >, and then switch back to the original mode.