Description David Biesack 2010-08-25 10:57:59 EDT

Build Identifier: I20100805-1700

The formatter likes to flow code into fewer lines and within the max line length.
This can often leave some code less readable. In particular, long String
concatenation for in-line templates get messed up. Consider a JUnit test
which creates a YAML input stream

  String yaml = "invoice: 34843" +
                "date   : 2001-01-23" +
                "bill-to: &id001" +
                "    given  : Chris" +
                "    family : Dumars" +
                "    address:" +
                "        lines: |" +
                "            458 Walkman Dr." +
                "            Suite #292" +
                "        city    : Royal Oak" +
                "        state   : MI" +
                "        postal  : 48046";

or array initialization

 Address addreses[] = new Address[] {
    new Address(123, "South Main", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
};

gets uglified rather than beautified by the formatter (100 columsn):


    String yaml = "invoice: 34843" + "date   : 2001-01-23" + "bill-to: &id001"
        + "    given  : Chris" + "    family : Dumars" + "    address:" + "        lines: |"
        + "            458 Walkman Dr." + "            Suite #292" + "        city    : Royal Oak"
        + "        state   : MI" + "        postal  : 48046";

    Address addreses[] = new Address[] { new Address(123, "South Main", "Anytown", 34567),
        new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567), new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567), };


One way to disable the flow/fill done by the formatter is to put //
comments at the end of the line, but that's pretty ugly. (A key binding
that did that automatically migh help, though, something like Ctlr=/
does for putting // at the beginning of the line) But these get in the
way as well and clutter the code.

There are formatter options for forcing array initializers to one item
per line, and for binary expressions wrapping/indenting that can do
this, but those are to aggressive and apply to all array initializers
or all expressions, which distort code (or they may not apply to
short examples that can flow onto one line, if the user has set that
option).
 
Instead, I propose a means to disable formatting, re-indentation, and code
flow/filling for regions of text by detecting a comment marker at the
beginning of a declaration, statement, expression
or { } block to suppress formatting there:

  // NOFORMAT
  String yaml = "invoice: 34843" +
                "date   : 2001-01-23" +
                "bill-to: &id001" +
                "    given  : Chris" +
                "    family : Dumars" +
                "    address:" +
                "        lines: |" +
                "            458 Walkman Dr." +
                "            Suite #292" +
                "        city    : Royal Oak" +
                "        state   : MI" +
                "        postal  : 48046";

I don't care too much about how this is expressed; this is just
a suggestion. // @NOFORMAT or // @NoFormat or // @noformat are
alternatives. It may work best in practice to allow the
marker to be placed within a paren group or { } block
and it applies until the end of the containing () or {}:

  init(new Address[] {  // @noformat
    new Address(123, "South Main", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    });

rather than requiring the marker before the { :

  init(new Address[] // @noformat
  {  
    new Address(123, "South Main", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
  });

but this may not work well with all formatter settings for { placement.

Another option would be an annotation such as 

 @Formatter("disabled") 

but that is only good for declarations and would not apply to code like

  init(new Address[] {  
    new Address(123, "South Main", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    new Address(4261, "Ash", "Anytown", 34567),
    });

so I think a special comment marker is needed instead of an annotation.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
See details