Clang format for banner style

Question

An open-source project I contribute to uses banner style (also called Ratliff style). It looks like that:

 // In C
 for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     if (i % 2 == 0) {
         doSomething(i);
         }
     else {
         doSomethingElse(i);
         }
     }

Some IDE's like QtCreator have their own configurations for formatting, but others, like Visual Studio Code, require a .clang-format file.

I looked online for existing configurations, and couldn't find any. Then I tried to make one from scratch using this clang-format generator, but I couldn't manage to indent the braces right.

So, is it possible to create a clang-format file for Ratliff/Banner style, or is there some missing configuration that will force us to use some other generator?

kfreezen kfreezen · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-11T02:06:01

This answer is not going to be the "answer" that you were looking for, but it is what I've discovered over the last two days of digging through the code for clang-format. I, too, have been looking for a way to auto-format a variant of banner style with clang-format.

clang-format seems to be missing some capabilities that would enable it to auto-format banner style.

For instance, you need to indent ending (right) braces for code blocks. clang-format does not even appear to track ending braces, but it does track starting (left) braces within its internals.

I started out my studying streak thinking I could understand the way clang-format implements its formatter system, so I could add the features needed to do it. Sadly it was way too complicated for me.

Perhaps someday we will be able to auto-format banner style with clang-format, but not today.

If someone out there knows this answer is inaccurate, please don't hesitate to correct me.

edit: Instead of giving you just a verification of what can't be done with clang-format, perhaps you might find http://astyle.sourceforge.net useful.

Clang format for banner style

1 Answers