It is possible to configure the elixir formatter to align the pattern match calls?

Questions / Help
1

For example, this is what the current formatter config is generating:

    cond do
      !String.starts_with?(message, "!!") -> :error
      !String.ends_with?(message, "%%") -> :error
      true -> :ok
    end

What I’m expecting is an option to put all those -> at the same level. Is this possible? I’ve looked at the config and I have not found anything.

2

The issue I see with that is git diffs. If you add another line to that code that changes the alignment of the ->, you’ll end up with a 4 line diff instead of 1.

3

The elixir formatter doesn‘t have a config for that. It explicitly doesn‘t have many options as one of the use cases it was created for was colaboration on open source elixir code and removing the need for discussions about how to format elixir. There are third party formatters nowadays, which are more configurable.

2 Likes
4

I had a nice plugin to my editor that made it easy to align these sorts of things (also with and for and multi-clause anonymous functions) before the formatter existed, but I had to give that up. I’ve just accepted that I won’t see that sort of polish any more. However, if you’re a bit adventurous you could perhaps configure your editor to apply your own extra formatting when opening a file, but then formatting it to the project standard when writing/committing.