Multiline strings don't line up

[ghost]

[avh4]

Do you have a suggestion for how this should work?

In your example, the content of the string is <newline><space>. elm-format does not change the contents of the string, (and rightly so, I believe). Is there a way we can format this better without changing the content of the string?

[ghost]

This is what I typed (no space, just newline):

I think elm-format should move them both over, rather than just the top one.

[Janiczek]

What @avh4 said (or, maybe, wanted to communicate) is that moving them both over would change the contents of the string.

string1 =
  """
  """

string2 =
    """
    """

These two aren't the same.

string1 == "\n  "
string2 == "\n    "

[ghost]

Okay, I didn't know how multiline strings work. How does moving neither over sit?

[ghost]

Here's a real example. I've pasted a multiline string in:

Then I've run elm-format (on save):

It aligns the first line of the string but not the rest.

[Janiczek]

tl;dr: elm-format shouldn't change the values, that's why it'll rather leave the """s unaligned than mess with them

---

I think there is no safe way to align both the same way everytime.

In your case it could be OK to deindent the spaces and not lose information (and the program would look nice):

query =
-    """
-        SELECT ?cause ... {
-          wdt:P1542 ...
-        }
-        """
+    """
+    SELECT ?cause ... {
+      wdt:P1542 ...
+    }
+    """

but generally there's no guarantee the user won't interpret the spaces somehow. Then elm-format would change what the program does, not only how it looks!

[ghost]

I think what I should have said is that I think it should preserve the alignment.

[Janiczek]

So, either:

---

align to self

let
    abc =
        "normal indentation"

    def =
            """
            whatever the user types, first quotes dictated by the last quotes

            + automatic
            + aligned to self
            + doesn't change string contents

            - misaligned to other definitions
            """
in
    1

---

align 4 spaces

let
    abc =
        "normal indentation"

    def =
        """
            indent the first quotes 4 spaces

            + automatic
            + aligned to other definitions
            + doesn't change string contents

            - misaligned to self (OCD person - aren't we all - would change that afterwards)
            """
in
    1

Other than that, just a practical note, the multiline strings most likely don't look that nice. More like:

myMarkdown =
    """
# My heading

Some text with [link](http://google.com) and whatnot.
"""

That would make the "align to self" decision align it this way:

myMarkdown =
"""
# My heading

Some text with [link](http://google.com) and whatnot.
"""

which I'm not even sure is legal syntax.

[ghost]

I prefer align to self, but I still don't understand why elm-format can't do align 4 spaces then correct the misalignment, as I would do myself. Perhaps I don't understand how elm-format works. I've noticed that once I've corrected the misalignment, elm-format doesn't misalign the string again.

[avh4]

The problem is that if elm-format does the alignment automatically, then that means that if someone wants to have a literal string that elm-format thinks is misaligned, then there's no way for the file to represent that exact string. It would be nice if elm-format could do this alignment, but I don't see a rule that would make that possible that also wouldn't make certain other strings impossible to have in your source code.

I think the auto-alignment fixing would be a feature that could be implemented in IDE plugins, so that the user could choose when and when not to perform the realignment.