How to reformat/reindent all the source files in a given directory?

Solution 1:

You could use vim in ex and command mode, from the terminal.

To indent a single file:

vim -c "normal gg=G" -e <file-to-indent> <<'EOF'
:wq
EOF

To indent files recursively, create the following script:

indent-with-vim.sh

vim -c "normal gg=G" -e $1 <<'EOF'
:wq
EOF

Now, type:

$ chmod u+x indent-with-vim.sh
$ find . | xargs -I {} ./indent-with-vim.sh {}

Vim will do its best to reindent the files. You may improve some specific file types.

For XML:

  • Install xmllint Add to your .vimrc

    au FileType xml setlocal equalprg=xmllint\ --format\ --recover\ -\ 2>/dev/null
    

To improve PHP formatting:

Download http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=15001 (it will download a file named php.vim)

Create the following directories on your home:

~/.vim/indent

And copy php.vim to ~/.vim/indent

If you are not satisfied with the result for any file type, you may look for alternatives on the web (like htb for HTML, https://github.com/vim-ruby/vim-ruby for improvements for Ruby, and so on).

Either way, you'd use or the .vimrc technique or the foo.vim indent file to improve the indentation.

Also, you can change the find parameters to apply to some specific types only, such as:

find . -iname "*.html" -or -iname "*.xml"

Solution 2:

Install the indent package and then run the program on the files.