Code formatting for TTree::Branch

ROOT
1

Hi,
cross listing my stackoverflow post. I’m wondering if there is a code formatting tool that supports vertical alignment of function arguments as in

  tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_WORST", &Regression_Q2_WORST, "Regression_Q2_WORST/F");
  tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_TRUE",  &Regression_Q2_TRUE,  "Regression_Q2_TRUE/F");
  tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_HI",    &Regression_Q2_HI,    "Regression_Q2_HI/F");
  tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_LO",    &Regression_Q2_LO,    "Regression_Q2_LO/F");

so far I just use tools that don’t change white spaces after the first non-white space character (vim auto-indent) and do the vertical alignment by hand. For trailing comments and assignment operators I’ve seen vertical alignment in clang-format though.

Cheers,
Paul

2

Hi Paul,

I am not sure one can achieve that with clang-format: did you try? I take the opportunity to advertise a new reference for the ROOT coding style clang-format configuration file: https://root.cern.ch/coding-conventions#ClangFormat

Cheers,
D

3

Tried yes, managed no. Though I’m not sure if that’s my inability to configure clang-format correctly or if comma-alignment is just not available with clang-format.
ps: thanks for the pointer to the clang-format settings for the coding conventions.

4

If you’ve got just one non-struct pod variable in the branch, you can simply omit the third parameter.

So:
tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_WORST", &Regression_Q2_WORST, "Regression_Q2_WORST/F");

can become:
tree->Branch("Regression_Q2_WORST", &Regression_Q2_WORST);

That doesn’t solve your problem but reduces it by 50%. You could also use a macro if you want to type Regression_Q2_WORST just once (beware of macros!).

Bonus: if you change the type of Regression_Q2_WORST to e.g. Double_t, the code will still be correct. No need to change /F to the new type.

If you want to use clang-format, surround your code with

// clang-format off
... code ...
// clang-format on

and clang-format will leave it alone.

5

thanks for the additions,
I will probably not use macros to keep the code readable and maintainable for non-macro knowers.
I also mostly clang-format small blocks of code interactively in the editor, so no immediate need to protect code from clang-format, as I wouldn’t run it once the code is aligned properly.

But in any case good to have it on record here, maybe somebody else will pick it up!