Regex for indenting lines

Question

I'm trying to mass indent my code in the way I prefer it - that is, each line should be indented by groups of 4 spaces, depending on how 'deep' that line is in code (e.g. children elements should get 4 extra than their parent).

Currently everything has 1 space (a sample from my code):

<html>
 <head>
  <title>Test</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
  <script src="jquery.js"></script>
  <script src="loadfiles.js"></script>
 </head>
...

I'd like to have it get 4 spaces for the first level, 8 for the second etc. So basically multiply the amount with 4.

I tried this Regex replace command:

^ (.*)$      // search for
    $1       // replace with

But this only replaces the first space of each line with 4 spaces. How can I also make it replace 2 spaces with 8 spaces etc.?

Thanks.

enable the global flag in your RegEx

jrn.ak
– jrn.ak

2011-03-04 19:47:56 +00:00
Commented Mar 4, 2011 at 19:47 — jrn.ak
– jrn.ak, Commented Mar 4, 2011 at 19:47

Chandu · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-04 19:49:13Z

10

Try this:

^(\s+)  //search for
$1$1$1$1 //replace with

answered Mar 4, 2011 at 19:49

Chandu

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mahalie · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-04 20:22:18Z

1

I think Cybernate is right. Just thought I'd mention you could accomplish this without any code by using block edit (column edit) feature in your favorite text editor (such as Notepad++, Coda etc.)

answered Mar 4, 2011 at 20:22

mahalie

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Pontus · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-04 21:45:50Z

1

Assuming you are on a system with perl, you could do this:

cat original.html | perl -lpe 's/^( +)/" "x(length($1) * 4)/e' > indented.html

That is, replace spaces in the beginning of a row by four times as many spaces.

answered Mar 4, 2011 at 21:45

Pontus

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