guns
commented
10 years ago Hi Brandon,
I definitely understand your desire here. Lisp indenting for literal data sometimes feels too right-indented after writing some JavaScript literals and the like.
OTOH, the standard convention of "subforms are never indented behind the opening bracket" is the one rule that keeps Lisp readable without having to move to full K&R brace style:
(defn example []
(foo {
:alpha (bar {
(baz {:alpha (quux '[
one {:beta abc
:gamma (zab [
rab
oof])} three])})})}))
;; At a glance: who is the grandparent of (zab)?This contrived example is a terrible mixture of Lisp and C conventions that totally obscures the tree structure of the code. Rewriting this in either Lisp or C brace style would be better, but mixing them is sinful.
The indenting script offers two options that can help with deeply nested forms: lispwords and g:clojure_fuzzy_indent_patterns. For instance, if we add foo to lispwords, your examples could look like¹:
(foo bar
[some
long
list
of
stuff
█
])
(foo bar
[{:some "kinda" :thing "here"}
█
])This looks acceptable to me, so I think what we might lack here is a quick way to add symbols to lispwords on the fly:¹
function! ToggleLispwords(word)
" Strip leading namespace qualifiers and macro characters from symbol
let word = substitute(a:word, "\\v%(.*/|[#'`~@^,]*)(.*)", '\1', '')
if &lispwords =~# '\V\<' . word . '\>'
execute 'setlocal lispwords-=' . word
echo "Removed " . word . " from lispwords."
else
execute 'setlocal lispwords+=' . word
echo "Added " . word . " to lispwords."
endif
endfunction
nnoremap <Leader>l :<C-U>call ToggleLispwords(expand('<cword>'))<CR>Now I can place my cursor on any symbol that I'd like to always two-space indent and use <Leader>l to add it to lispwords. Of course, if you find that you always want this symbol indented like this, you would add this to your vimrc to make it persist.
My personal philosophy on developer tools is that they should be maximally flexible (unlike, say, client software), but I also think they should teach users good habits. This is especially true when the habit to be learned is Lisp indenting.
Hope I've been persuasive, but if not, I am always open to discussion. :)
¹ Indenting compound forms in this way is really intended for "special" functions and macros, but eh, it's our code and we can do what we like.
EDIT: Fixed the vim snippet
brandonbloom
Sometimes, I want to write code that looks like this:
It's bad style for small cases, but much nicer for long lists, particularly with extra whitespace and whatnot.
Right now, if you press
<cr>after a naked(,[, or{, you get something like this:Where the
|stands for the cursor. Worse, if you forcibly outdent, type some, then press<cr>again, you get this:Ideally, pressing return after naked braces would indent 2 spaces. Alternatively, the indenting should prefer to align with the previous line, not the most recent open-bracket.