rubocop / rubocop/ruby-style-guide

Style/BlockDelimiters breaks natural language of rspec matchers

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Description

RSpec Expectations allow syntax like:

expect { ... some code ... }.to raise_error(MyErrorClass, my_error_message)

However if the code under test is not trivially short, it will need to be split onto multiple lines, e.g. here's some real-world code:

it "should barf if the definition's type is not right" do
  expect {
    fixture.definition = "sometype #{fixture.name} blah blah"
  }.to \
    raise_error(
      Pacemaker::CIBObject::TypeMismatch,
      "Expected #{object_type} type but loaded definition was type sometype"
    )
end

but this causes

Style/BlockDelimiters: Avoid using {...} for multi-line blocks.
https://github.com/bbatsov/ruby-style-guide#single-line-blocks

complaints from rubocop.

The problem is that changing it to

expect do
  ... some code ...
end.to raise_error(MyErrorClass, my_error_message)

completely ruins the previously natural language flow of the "expect ... to" statement. So what's the solution?

A related problem is that I'm also struggling to find a combination of line breaks/continuations and indentation which looks good here. Suggestions very welcome.

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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

Review the RSpec Expectations examples and the Style/BlockDelimiters complaint in this issue, then read the comment thread for any agreed direction. A completed change would document a clear recommendation for formatting multi-line matcher expectations without losing the natural "expect ... to" flow.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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