Ever been inside a code block and want to reformat (via ==) a number of lines but not the whole file and not line by line?

Let’s say you’ve got code like this:

[cpp]
class MyClass
{
public:
MyClass()
{
std::cout << "In MyClass constructor" << std::endl;
}

int somefunc()
{
for (;;)
{
std::cout << "breaking" << std::endl;
}
}
};
[/cpp]

That’s just not ideally formatted, is it? Here’s one cool way to format it:

  • Put the cursor somewhere inside the outer most block – say on public: or on the blank line between the constructor and the function.
  • hit: =aB

That will format “a block” and that means it formats the outer block recursively down to the inner most blocks. Not that this is a great demonstration, but it looks like this:

[cpp]
class MyClass
{
public:
MyClass()
{
std::cout << "In MyClass constructor" << std::endl;
}

int somefunc()
{
for (;;)
{
std::cout << "breaking" << std::endl;
}
}
};
[/cpp]