Indent (Unix)

indent is a Unix utility that reformats C and C++ code in a user-defined indentation style and coding style. Support for C++ code is minimal.^[3]

indent

Original author(s)	David Willcox
Developer(s)	David Ingamells, Carlo Wood, Joseph Arceneaux, Jim Kingdon, John Bridges
Initial release	November 1976; 48 years ago (1976-11)
Stable release	2.2.13[1] / 20 March 2023; 2 years ago (20 March 2023)
Repository	git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/indent.git
Written in	C
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	source-code-reformat tool
License	GNU: GPL-3.0-or-later[2]
Website	GNU: gnu.org/software/indent/

The original version of indent was written by David Willcox at the University of Illinois in November 1976. It was incorporated into 4.1BSD in October 1982.^[4] GNU indent was first written by Jim Kingdon in 1989. The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.^[5]

Examples of usage

The following command

$ indent -st -bap -bli0 -i4 -l79 -ncs -npcs -npsl -fca -lc79 -fc1 -ts4 some_file.c

indents some_file.c in a style resembling BSD/Allman style and writes the result to the standard output.

GNU indent

GNU indent is the GNU Project's version of indent. A different indentation style, the GNU style, is used by default.^[6]