How Can I Stop Emacs From Indenting The 2nd Line Of A Javascript Comma-separated List (e.g. Array Or Json)?

Emacs indents my code like this: var myArray = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ]; Instead of like this: var myArray = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

Solution 1:

It looks like you are using java-mode to edit JavaScript code. While Java and JavaScript share enough syntax that this will probably work okay, it is better to use a dedicated JavaScript mode¹.

Emacs includes js-mode from version 23.2, which is a reasonably good mode for basic JavaScript editing. If you can upgrade Emacs this is likely your easiest option. You may also be able to install js-mode (or its predecessor espresso-mode) on Emacs 23.1. Here is the latest version.

Alternatively, you can use a third-party mode like js2-mode, which actually includes a full JavaScript interpreter. There is also js3-mode, which claims to be

A chimeric fork of js2-mode and js-mode

Both js2-mode and the version of js-mode built into my Emacs 24.4 indent your sample code exactly as you want:

var myArray = [
    1,
    2,
    3,
    4,
    5,
];

¹Unfortunately, there is still enough confusion out there that it's worth stating that Java and JavaScript are completely different languages. You probably already know this; I think Emacs actually defaulted to java-mode for JavaScript code for a while.