Can BBEdit format code like it formats HTML?

[James Reynolds]

I know BBEdit has an HTML formatter. Can it also format code? Like what https://beautifier.io/ does for JavaScript?

James Reynolds
Sr Systems Administrator
School of Biological Sciences
The University of Utah
801-585-3086

[Steve deRosier]

Well, it does automatically handle indentation depending on your settings, and you can setup clippings if that's your jam. It also does a lot of coloring, especially nice when setup via ctags.

For more hardcore reformatting, you can always setup to trigger external commands, like `astyle` for C/C++/Java, or one of the many python PEP8 formatters.  The flexibility in this regard is one of the things I like about BBEdit. Though personally I usually restrict such options to doing manually on the commandline; for python projects I use pylint triggered from a Makefile to enforce style guidelines that I choose to enable.

I also like the fact it doesn't autoformat for me... in other words it doesn't get in my way or overrule me. Since for any given project I'm working with 3-8 different languages, it staying out of my way and only helping in the ways I want is critical. I also wouldn't ever want an editor take in a project file and just reformat it for me because that breaks revision control history for zero useful purpose; I've had IDEs do this to me and dropped them immediately because of it.

Hope that helps!

- Steve

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[Rick Yentzer]

Hey James,

BBEdit formats only html and css to the best of my knowledge. Like Steve, I have used command line utilities if I needed additional formatting for other languages. I mostly work with web languages and python/php and have my build tools set to format if needed. Hope that helps.

[Charlie Garrison]

On 19 Sep 2020, at 3:48, James Reynolds wrote:

I know BBEdit has an HTML formatter. Can it also format code? Like what https://beautifier.io/ does for JavaScript?

BBEdit has fantastic support for Text Filters. So if your formatter of choice works via CLI, writing a formatter (prettifier) is fairly trivial.

I have attached the filter script I use, which auto-detects language and applies appropriate command. It should be easy to swap out prettier for beautifier.

I set a keyboard shortcut for the filter, so it's as simple to use as the built-in formatting - select the text to format, type shortcut. (No selection will format the whole document.)

-cng

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Charlie Garrison                   <cha...@garrison.com.au>
Garrison Computer Services      <http://www.garrison.com.au>
PO Box 380
Tumbarumba NSW 2653  Australia

[TJ Luoma]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 7:44 PM Charlie Garrison <charlie...@garrison.com.au> wrote:

> BBEdit has fantastic support for Text Filters. So if your formatter of choice works via CLI, writing
> a formatter (prettifier) is fairly trivial.

I'm not very familiar with these. Are there any out there which format bash / zsh shell scripts?

 

[Charlie Garrison]

On 21 Sep 2020, at 9:57, TJ Luoma wrote:

I'm not very familiar with these. Are there any out there which format bash / zsh shell scripts?

I haven't looked. If there are I'm sure an online search will reveal them. Common terms are "tidy", "prettify" & "beautify".

[Rick Yentzer]

Thanks for the file Charlie. That is really helpful and I will be adding it to my own workflow.

[James Reynolds]

Charlie,
This is exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you!

James

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> <16)prettier.sh>

[isao]

That's nice Charlie-- I didn't realize prettier fixed other things like JSON too.

Here's my BBEdit shell script https://github.com/isao/shell/blob/master/bbedit/Scripts/lint.sh

It will fix and/or report lint issues. Added JSON just now after seeing your script.

[Charlie Garrison]

On 2 Dec 2020, at 10:30, isao wrote:

Here's my BBEdit shell script https://github.com/isao/shell/blob/master/bbedit/Scripts/lint.sh

Nice.

I just came across tidyall this morning:

https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Code-TidyAll/bin/tidyall

I may rewrite my BBEdit text filter to use that, since it may be easier to enable "plugins" than to adapt the filter script for each new formatter I need.