Question

If the code we have looks like

for(...){

}

after reformatting I’d like it to look like

for(...)
{

}

as well for all functions, methods, classes etc.
I found something similar in other article in stackoverflow but it was a regular expression and needed to type every time in the vim console. And I am looking for something to put in the vimrc file (if possible) and to work every time I open it.

Well this is the one I’ve found:

:%s/^(\s*).*\zs{\s*$/\r\1{/ 

in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4463211/is-there-a-way-to-reformat-braces-automatically-with-vim but the thing is it adds a new line even if the bracket is on the right place… and still don’t know how to map it to key combination.

Answer 1

(edited with a more accurate pattern)

This should do the trick:

nnoremap <F9> :%s/^\(\s*\).\+\zs{\ze\s*$/\r\1{<cr>

But it it doesn’t really sound “safe” to me.

Instead, you could do:

nnoremap <F9> :%s/^\(\s*\).\+\zs{\ze\s*$/\r\1{/c<cr>

which will ask for a confirmation for each match.

Or record a macro and play it back using :global.

edit

Your pattern, :%s/^(\s*).*\zs{\s*$/\r\1{/, is wrong because:

• the capture parentheses are not properly escaped, (\s*) instead of \(\s*\)

• .* would match any number of any character, including 0 which is why the substitution also works on lines with a single {.