I have tried everything I have found in monks supersearch, and all over the web. The suggestions that held the most promise were found at stackoverflow.com, but to absolutely no avail. I have tried so many different things, and so many combinations of different things in my .vimrc file, and none will work.

This problem has frustrated me for so long, and I'm at my wit's end.

To reproduce my woeful situation, one need only open a perl file in vim and type:

.. then hit the carriage return. That automatically indents your code for you, in most default vim installs. Great! That's what it should do! At this point you can start in with your code, which would look something like:

sub foo {
   my $bar = 'baz';
[download]

All is well. Now hit the carriage return again and start a comment. Instantly vim outdents the comment to column zero:

sub foo {
   my $bar = 'baz';
# some comment
[download]

This is exactly what I am so tired of experiencing. The comment should stay, imo, right in line with "my $bar..." at indented column n (where n=three spaces for me).

*Holds back a long string of curses* Please, anyone, can you tell me what I am missing here, and why vim just will NOT allow me to:

sub foo {
   my $bar = 'baz';
   # some comment
[download]

Stuck, and so sad in vim indentation hell, I remain...