how to specify indentation for a file?

I heard that we can specify VIM indent for a file by embedding the indentation commands into the file to be edited.

Can 开发者_如何转开发somebody let me know how to do this?

The thing you are looking for is called a modeline.

Here is a modeline that I commonly use for vim:

/* vim:set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 tabstop=4 expandtab: */

A similar thing for emacs would look like this:

/* -*- Mode: tab-width: 4; c-basic-offset: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil -*- */

This question has been covered before though.

Something like

// vim: set ts=4 sw=4 et:

where // is your language's comment marker.

You can also specify indentation for a given filetype.

For example for python files, you can add this line to your .vimrc file:

autocmd FileType python set sw=4 sta

The advantage compared to modelines is that you don't have to write it everytime. Then for a specific python file, if you want to change the indentation, you can write this modeline:

# vim: set sw=2: