gary@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM (Gary Jackoway) (01/23/90)
Does anybody have a GOOD c-beautify program? I tried using cb, and was disappointed for the following reasons: - cb does not handle long comments (> ~15 lines). It truncates them and eventually gives up altogether. - cb does not allow you to specify amount of indentation. I greatly prefer 4 characters. cb uses a tab and then the characters end up all the way over on the right hand side of the page. - Although cb allows you to specify a maximum line length, given the use of tab for indentation, this option is not very useful. - cb does not re-format the code in all cases. I had a line: if (pred) if (pred2) and it left it like this even though stylistically it never puts two if's on a line. - cb doesn't give you any control over the final style. I like the way it does some things, but not others. It would be great if there were a cb with templates. It would be nice to tell it: if (pred) { text; } OR if (pred) { text; } whatever you prefered. Any pointers to good beautifiers would be appreciated. Thanks, Gary Jackoway gary@hpavla
sullivan@aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan) (01/24/90)
From article <9130001@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM>, by gary@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM (Gary Jackoway): > Does anybody have a GOOD c-beautify program? > I tried using cb, and was disappointed for the following reasons: > - cb does not allow you to specify amount of indentation. I greatly > prefer 4 characters. cb uses a tab and then the characters end > up all the way over on the right hand side of the page. Why don't you just live with the tab and set the tab size in your editor-du-jour? -- Michael Sullivan uunet!jarthur!aqdata!sullivan aQdata, Inc. sullivan@aqdata.uucp San Dimas, CA
gejohann@uokmax.uucp (Gene Edward Johannsen) (01/24/90)
In article <9130001@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM> gary@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM (Gary Jackoway) writes: >Does anybody have a GOOD c-beautify program? >I tried using cb, and was disappointed for the following reasons: > /* Reasons expunged */ >Any pointers to good beautifiers would be appreciated. > >Gary Jackoway >gary@hpavla If you are working on a UNIX system you should be able to use indent, which seems appropriately named for your problems. It allows you to customize the way you want the beautification done. Just do a man indent for all the info. gene
ilan343@violet.berkeley.edu (01/24/90)
>From article <9130001@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM>, by gary@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM (Gary Jackoway): >> Does anybody have a GOOD c-beautify program? >> I tried using cb, and was disappointed for the following reasons: >> - cb does not allow you to specify amount of indentation. I greatly >> prefer 4 characters. cb uses a tab and then the characters end >> up all the way over on the right hand side of the page. What about "indent"? It is fairly configurable. If your machine doesn't have it, it was posted to comp.sources.unix. There is also a GNU implementation.
gary@hpavla.AVO.HP.COM (Gary Jackoway) (01/24/90)
Thanks for all the responses. Everybody mentioned the "indent" program. Chris Mathes gave me a way of getting at the program (which is not on my machine): > Try 'indent', based on Berkley's version. I like it because it has a > bewildering array of options that you can toggle/specify. It should be > in volume18 of the comp.sources.unix archives. You can anonymous ftp it > from uunet.uu.net. I'm still interested in beautifiers OTHER than indent, although indent looks quite sufficient. For reference, here's the manual page to indent, courtesy of Raymond Chen: NAME indent - indent and format C program source SYNOPSIS indent [ input-file [ output-file ] ] [ -bacc | -nbacc ] [ -bad | -nbad ] [ -bap | -nbap ] [ -bbb | -nbbb ] [ -bc | -nbc ] [ -bl ] [ -br ] [ -bs | -nbs ] [ -cn ] [ -cdn ] [ -cdb | -ncdb ] [ -ce | -nce ] [ -cin ] [ -clin ] [ -dn ] [ -din ] [ -eei | -neei ] [ -fc1 | -nfc1 ] [ -in ] [ -ip | -nip ] [ -ln ] [ -lcn ] [ -lp | -nlp ] [ -pcs | -npcs ] [ -npro ] [ -psl | -npsl ] [ -sc | -nsc ] [ -sob | -nsob ] [ -st ] [ -troff ] [ -v | -nv ] DESCRIPTION Indent is a C program formatter. It reformats the C program in the input-file according to the switches. The switches which can be specified are described below. They may appear before or after the file names. NOTE: If you only specify an input-file, the formatting is done `in-place', that is, the formatted file is written back into input-file and a backup copy of input-file is written in the current directory. If input-file is named `/blah/blah/file', the backup file is named file.BAK. If output-file is specified, indent checks to make sure it is different from input-file. OPTIONS The options listed below control the formatting style imposed by indent. -bap,-nbap If -bap is specified, a blank line is forced after every procedure body. Default: -nbap. -bacc,-nbacc If -bacc is specified, a blank line is forced around every conditional compilation block. ie. in front of every #ifdef and after every #endif. Other blanklines surrounding these will be swallowed. Default: -nbacc. -bad,-nbad If -bad is specified, a blank line is forced after every block of declarations. Default: -nbad. -bbb,-nbbb If -bbb is specified, a blank line is forced before every block comment. Default: -nbbb. -bc,-nbc If -bc is specified, then a newline is forced after each comma in a declaration. -nbc turns off this option. The default is -bc. -br,-bl Specifying -bl lines up compound statements like this: if (...) { code } Specifying -br (the default) makes them look like this: if (...) { code } -bs,-nbs Enables (disables) the forcing of a blank after sizeof. Some people believe that sizeof should appear as though it were a pro- cedure call (-nbs, the default) and some peo- ple believe that since sizeof is an operator, it should always be treated that way and should always have a blank after it. -cn The column in which comments on code start. The default is 33. -cdn The column in which comments on declarations start. The default is for these comments to start in the same column as those on code. -cdb,-ncdb Enables (disables) the placement of comment delimiters on blank lines. With this option enabled, comments look like this: /* * this is a comment */ Rather than like this: /* this is a comment */ This only affects block comments, not com- ments to the right of code. The default is -cdb . -ce,-nce Enables (disables) forcing `else's to cuddle up to the immediatly preceeding `}'. The default is -ce . -cin Sets the continuation indent to be n. Con- tinuation lines will be indented that far from the beginning of the first line of the statement. Parenthesized expressions have extra indentation added to indicate the nest- ing, unless -lp is in effect. -ci defaults to the same value as -i. -clin Causes case labels to be indented n tab stops to the right of the containing switch state- ment. -cli0.5 causes case labels to be indented half a tab stop. The default is -cli0 . -dn Controls the placement of comments which are not to the right of code. The default -d1 means that such comments are placed one indentation level to the left of code. Specifying -d0 lines up these comments with the code. See the section on comment inden- tation below. -din Specifies the indentation, in character posi- tions, from a declaration keyword to the fol- lowing identifier. The default is -di16 . -eei,-neei If -eei is specified, and extra expression indent is applied on continuation lines of the expression part of if() and while(). These continuation lines will be indented one extra level - twice instead of just once. This is to avoid the confusion between the continued expression and the statement that follows the if() or while(). Default: -neei. -fc1,-nfc1 Enables (disables) the formatting of comments that start in column 1. Often, comments whose leading `/' is in column 1 have been carefully hand formatted by the programmer. In such cases, -nfc1 should be used. The default is -fc1. -in The number of spaces for one indentation level. The default is 4. -ip,-nip Enables (disables) the indentation of parame- ter declarations from the left margin. The default is -ip . -ln Maximum length of an output line. The default is 75. -lcn Sets the line length for block comments to n. It defaults to being the same as the usual line length as specified with -l. -lp,-nlp Lines up code surrounded by parenthesis in continuation lines. If a line has a left paren which is not closed on that line, then continuation lines will be lined up to start at the character position just after the left paren. For example, here is how a piece of continued code looks with -nlp in effect: p1 = first_procedure(second_procedure(p2, p3), third_procedure(p4, p5)); With -lp in effect (the default) the code looks somewhat clearer: p1 = first_procedure(second_procedure(p2, p3), third_procedure(p4, p5)); Inserting a couple more newlines we get: p1 = first_procedure(second_procedure(p2, p3), third_procedure(p4, p5)); -npro Causes the profile files, `./.indent.pro' and `~/.indent.pro', to be ignored. -pcs , -npcs If true (-pcs) all procedure calls will have a space inserted between the name and the '('. The default is -npcs -psl , -npsl If true (-psl) the names of procedures being defined are placed in column 1 - their types, if any, will be left on the previous lines. The default is -psl -sc,-nsc Enables (disables) the placement of asterisks (`*'s) at the left edge of all comments. -sob,-nsob If -sob is specified, indent will swallow optional blank lines. You can use this to get rid of blank lines after declarations. Default: -nsob -st Causes indent to take its input from stdin, and put its output to stdout. -Ttypename Adds typename to the list of type keywords. Names accumulate: -T can be specified more than once. You need to specify all the typenames that appear in your program that are defined by typedefs - nothing will be harmed if you miss a few, but the program won't be formatted as nicely as it should. This sounds like a painful thing to have to do, but it's really a symptom of a problem in C: typedef causes a syntactic change in the laguage and indent can't find all typedefs. -troff Causes indent to format the program for pro- cessing by troff. It will produce a fancy listing in much the same spirit as vgrind. If the output file is not specified, the default is standard output, rather than for- matting in place. The usual way to get a troff'd listing is with the command indent -troff program.c | troff -mindent -v,-nv -v turns on `verbose' mode, -nv turns it off. When in verbose mode, indent reports when it splits one line of input into two or more lines of output, and gives some size statis- tics at completion. The default is -nv. FURTHER DESCRIPTION You may set up your own `profile' of defaults to indent by creating a file called .indent.pro in either your login directory or the current directory and including whatever switches you like. A `.indent.pro' in the current directory takes precedence over the one in your login directory. If indent is run and a profile file exists, then it is read to set up the program's defaults. Switches on the command line, though, always override profile switches. The switches should be separated by spaces, tabs or newlines. Comments `Box' comments. Indent assumes that any comment with a dash or star immediately after the start of comment (that is, `/*-' or `/**') is a comment surrounded by a box of stars. Each line of such a comment is left unchanged, except that its indentation may be adjusted to account for the change in indentation of the first line of the comment. Straight text. All other comments are treated as straight text. Indent fits as many words (separated by blanks, tabs, or newlines) on a line as possible. Blank lines break para- graphs. Comment indentation If a comment is on a line with code it is started in the `comment column', which is set by the -cn command line parameter. Otherwise, the comment is started at n indenta- tion levels less than where code is currently being placed, where n is specified by the -dn command line parameter. If the code on a line extends past the comment column, the com- ment starts further to the right, and the right margin may be automatically extended in extreme cases. Preprocessor lines In general, indent leaves preprocessor lines alone. The only reformmatting that it will do is to straighten up trailing comments. It leaves imbedded comments alone. Con- ditional compilation (#ifdef...#endif) is recognized and indent attempts to correctly compensate for the syntactic peculiarites introduced. C syntax Indent understands a substantial amount about the syntax of C, but it has a `forgiving' parser. It attempts to cope with the usual sorts of incomplete and misformed syntax. In particular, the use of macros like: #define forever for(;;) is handled properly. FILES ./.indent.pro profile file ~/.indent.pro profile file /usr/lib/tmac/tmac.indent Troff macro package for ``indent -troff'' output. BUGS Indent has even more switches than ls. A common mistake that often causes grief is typing: indent *.c to the shell in an attempt to indent all the C programs in a directory. This is probably a bug, not a feature. The -bs option splits an excessivly fine hair. Gary Jackoway