Why is go fmt soft on newlines in between code?

[prasad83]

go fmt standardization of code is good in most cases but it goes soft on newline usage within code.

Why not have (one newline after statement and one newline before block) as a standard. This will avoid code uniformity.

Example:

var myVar string

myVar = "Here is next statement"

if myVar != "" {
    myVar = "Here in the if block"
}
println(myVar)

Would become

var myVar string
myVar = "Here is next statement"

if myVar != "" {
   myVar = "Here in the if block"
}

println(myVar)

[davecheney]

IMO newlines are often used like paragraphs in a book, they separate distinct ideas. How would you suggest this fragment be formatted?

err := fn()
if err != nil { 
   // clean up
   return err
}

[lu4p]

I agree that go fmt should enforce some newlines, I'm not sure I agree with the rules you came up with, as this would mean that simple error checks have a new line before them.

• newline after a block ({}\n) or multiple continious blocks (if {} else{}\n), this means a newline after every error check

• the newline isn't added if the following line also closes a block

  func main() {
  for {
  } // no newline here
  }

There might be other cases where it makes sense to inject a newline.

I think this is highly opinonated and we should explore this with gofumpt first.

[mdlayher]

Please see https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Questions. Closing.