PowerShell / PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer

When a line ends in an operator, automatically indent the next line since it is part of the same code statement

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Area - Formatter Area-Code Formatting Issue-Enhancement
Dominant language
C#
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Summary of the new feature

As a user, when a line ends in a line continuation operator (=, +, -, etc.), I would like the next line to be indented so that it is clear both lines are part of the same statement, and that the 2nd line is not the start of a new code statement. This behaviour is already implemented for the pipe | operator, and it would be great if the other operators followed the same rules. This behaviour would also match the default behaviour of other languages, such as C# in Visual Studio. In VS Code, this behaviour is controlled for the pipe operator with the powershell.codeFormatting.pipelineIndentationStyle setting.

For example, when using the VS Code setting powershell.codeFormatting.pipelineIndentationStyle = IncreaseIndentationForFirstPipeline, the code is currently formatted like this:

$result =
Get-Process |
    Select-Object -First 1

I would prefer = to follow the same rules as | and have the code formatted like this:

$result =
    Get-Process |
    Select-Object -First 1

In this small example it may look silly to not just do:

$result = Get-Process |
    Select-Object -First 1

However, sometimes with fully qualified namespaces and descriptive variable names, the left-side of the equal operator may get very lengthy, such as:

[System.Collections.ArrayList] $listOfCustomersWithValidDriversLicenses = Get-CustomersFromCmdletWithAVeryLongName -Country Canada -AreaCode 123

This would look much better and prevent horizontal scrolling as:

[System.Collections.ArrayList] $listOfCustomersWithValidDriversLicenses = 
    Get-CustomersFromCmdletWithAVeryLongName -Country Canada -AreaCode 123

Currently, VS Code formats the code like this:

[System.Collections.ArrayList] $listOfCustomersWithValidDriversLicenses = 
Get-CustomersFromCmdletWithAVeryLongName -Country Canada -AreaCode 123

The current formatting makes it easy to overlook that the results returned from Get-CustomersFromCmdletWithAVeryLongName are being saved in a variable.

The example above is for the = operator, but I think it would make sense to do the same thing for +, -, and any other line continuation operators (i.e. that don't require a backtick ` to have the statement continue onto the next line).

Aside: I originally posted this issue in the vscode-powershell repo here, but I think this is the proper place for this feature request.

What is the latest version of PSScriptAnalyzer at the point of writing

The latest stable version of PSScriptAnalyzer is currently v1.22.0.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the existing pipe | indentation behavior in PSScriptAnalyzer's formatter and how line-continuation operators are classified. Extend the same rules to operators such as =, +, and -, then verify the formatted output against the examples and the existing pipe behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
powershell
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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