automatic nesting and indentation in emacs

[Ben Barrowes]

In emacs matlab-mode, highlight a region then use indent-region:

C-M-\ runs the command indent-region
    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `indent'.
(indent-region START END COLUMN)

Indent each nonblank line in the region.
With prefix no argument, indent each line using `indent-according-to-mode',
or use `indent-region-function' to do the whole region if that's non-nil.
If there is a fill prefix, make each line start with the fill prefix.
With argument COLUMN, indent each line to that column.

When you call this from a program, START and END specify
the region to indent, and COLUMN specifies the indentation column.
If COLUMN is nil, then indent each line according to the mode.



porterboy wrote:
> CONTEXT:
> I am using Emacs to edit Python code and sometimes also Matlab code.
> When I hit <return> in a loop of some sort, Emacs usually gets the
> nesting indentation right, which is particularly important in Python.
> To ensure this I have used python-mode.el and matlab.el modes in
> emacs.
> 
> QUESTION:
> If I suddenly decide I want an outer loop, do I have to manually
> readjust the indentation of all the inner loops? Or can emacs do it
> automatically? I know the Matlab in-built editor has a tool called
> "smart-indent" which will automatically align highlighted text to have
> the correct indentation. Does Emacs have something similar?
> 
> Thanks
> The Porterboy - "Lovely day for a Guinness"