Getting electric indent behaviour for added chars to "electric-indent-chars"

Question

I am trying to get electric indent behaviour in bazel BUILD files. These are essentially python files, although the structure is extremely simple.

Let me give you an example:

cc_binary(
    name = "hello-world",
    srcs = ["hello-world.cc"],
    deps = [
        ":hello-greet",
        "//lib:hello-time",
    ],
)

What I want is to have electric indentation behaviour for "]" and ")".

What I have tried is:

to add these characters to electric-indent-chars
to add electric-indent-post-self-insert-function to post-self-insert-hook

Neither of these steps seems to change the behaviour of the characters. What am I doing wrong?

What major mode are you using? Does TAB-indentation work in it? — Stefan, Mar 16 '19 at 13:06
Major mode is derived from python-mode. TAB runs 'indent-for-tab-command' and indents the way I want. — Realraptor, Mar 16 '19 at 15:40
Update: python.el sets 'electric-indent-inhibit' to avoid automatic indentation so 'electric-indent-chars' is never used. — Realraptor, Mar 16 '19 at 17:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '19 at 17:08

1

If your major mode derives from python-mode, than you likely need to make it

(setq-local electric-indent-inhibit nil)

As for why it's non-nil: python-mode sets this vars to a non-nil value because electric-indent is usually undesirable when indentation is syntactically significant (as in Python).

answered Mar 16 '19 at 17:08

Stefan

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That worked, thanks! – Realraptor Mar 16 '19 at 23:43

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '19 at 23:46

The solution is slightly more complicated than Stefan's answer, so it might be worth recording the details.

(defun rr-enable-electric-indent ()
  (setq-local electric-indent-inhibit nil)
  (add-to-list 'electric-indent-chars ?\))
  (add-to-list 'electric-indent-chars ?\]))

(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'rr-enable-electric-indent)

Getting electric indent behaviour for added chars to "electric-indent-chars"

2 Answers2