indent being odd -- fix or choose an alternative

Question

I'm running indent with arguments -npro -kr -i8 -ts8 -sob -l80 -ss -ncs -cp1, all is good except two obstacles:

1) It tends to put an extra space after * in statements like mytype_t * my;, i.e.

void my_function(my_type *ptr)

turns into

void my_function(my_type * ptr)

2) It places extra space after & symbol in expressions like (uint16_t *) & q->drops i.e.

stats->drops = (uint16_t *) &q->drops

turns into

stats->drops = (uint16_t *) & q->drops

Running indent with -nss or without -ss does not solve the problem.

Is there a way to tell indent not to do this? If not, what are the alternatives to indent ?

Thanks.

SOLUTION

% indent -T my_type -T uint16_t

I don't understand the second case. Is something missing there? — Eugene Sh., Aug 23 '16 at 17:58
Sidenote: 8 chars indentation is not a good idea. typical values are 2 to 4 spaces (4 most common). 8 spaces will make the code actually less readable. — too honest for this site, Aug 23 '16 at 17:58
Can you show an example (a short one) of a valid C source with these statements before and after `indent`? — Eugene Sh., Aug 23 '16 at 18:04
Have you tried other options such as eliminating the `-ss` argument or using `-nss` What happens when you do it with no arguments so that it is completely with the default? — sabbahillel, Aug 23 '16 at 18:25

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 23 '16 at 18:56

After some searching, I couldn't find the option to remove the space between type and pointer. What was weird is it only happens when that type ends with a _t. So, this probably does not answer your question. However a good alternative to indent is astyle. For the style you're looking for, you can use these flags:

astyle --style=kr --indent=tab

I really hope this helps.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '16 at 19:51

1

From man indent:

You must use the '-T' option to tell indent the name of all the typenames in your program that are defined by typedef. '-T' can be specified more than once, and all names specified are used. For example, if your program contains

typedef unsigned long CODE_ADDR;
typedef enum {red, blue, green} COLOR;

you would use the options -T CODE_ADDR -T COLOR.

So it seems like indent doesn't know about the stdint.h types, so you have to let it know you are using them by passing -T uint16_t -T mytype_t

answered Aug 23 '16 at 19:51

Eugene Sh.

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thank you, it seems to solve the first problem (my_type * ptr), but not the second (extra space after &). – Mark Aug 23 '16 at 20:15
1

Looks like it is considering `&` to be a bitwise AND. I wonder how can we convince it it is not... Have you actually did `-T uint16_t` to let it know it is a type cast? – Eugene Sh. Aug 23 '16 at 20:20
oh it actually works, I mistakenly passed "-T uint32_t" instead. Thank you. – Mark Aug 23 '16 at 20:28
Good. Then it's not a bug. – Eugene Sh. Aug 23 '16 at 20:29

indent being odd -- fix or choose an alternative

2 Answers2