Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals?

[will_]

At work we've recently tried to agree on a set of perltidy rules. We came up with these:

-i=4        # 4 character indents in blocks
-pt=2       # "horizontal tightness"
-wls='=>'   # ensure there's always space to the left of =>
-wrs='=>'   # and always to the right of =>
-vtc=0      # always break before a closing token
-l=79       # 79 characters wide please
-nolc       # no "outdenting" for long comments - indent them properly
-nolq       # no "outdenting" for long quotes/strings
-sot        # stack opening tokens - same as -sop -sohb -sosb
-sct        # stack closing tokens

But they seem to result in unexpected changes like this:

-    error(300) if $@; # 300 = GSI_BAD_ID
+    error(300) if $@;    # 300 = GSI_BAD_ID

and this:

     my $d;
     $d->{status}      = 'queued';
     $d->{description} = 'The action was successfully queued';
-    $d->{id}          = '12345'; # Identifies action request
+    $d->{id} = '12345';    # Identifies action request

So my questions are:
1) What's the point of these changes?
2) Which options control them?

I read the docs but did not find anything relevant:
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/perltidy.html#formatting_options
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/stylekey.html

[Eily]

-msc=n, --minimum-space-to-comment=n
Side comments look best when lined up several spaces to the right of code. Perltidy will try to keep comments at least n spaces to the right. The default is n=4 spaces.

I don't know how to align assignments though.

[LanX]

> don't know how to align assignments though.

Neither me, could be a default w/o config option.

[will_]

To clarify, the lining up of assignments is automatic (and most agreeable). The only time it doesn't happen is when it would make the line too long.

[LanX]

Could you please be more specific about what you consider "unexpected changes" and what your desired output looks like?

your option -nolc mentions comments, searching the docs for -nolc shows

-olc, --outdent-long-comments

    When -olc is set, lines which are full-line (block) comments longe
+r than the value maximum-line-length will have their indentation remo
+ved. This is the default; use -nolc to prevent outdenting.

so what is your question?

[will_]

Rolf, I would expect those lines not to change at all.
Eily, thanks -msc pointed me in the right direction.

After some more experimenting, I've found that this code:

    $d->{status} = 'queued'; # something
    $d->{description} = 'The action'; # other thing
    $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action

gets changed to this:

    $d->{status}      = 'queued';     # something
    $d->{description} = 'The action'; # other thing
    $d->{id}          = '12345';      # Identifies action

...which is definitely better in that case.

But even if only the last line had a comment and I use -msc=1:

    $d->{status} = 'queued';
    $d->{description} = 'The action';
    $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action

...it still pushes the comment way out to the right to align with some non-existent other comments. That's not necessary.

    $d->{status}      = 'queued';
    $d->{description} = 'The action';
    $d->{id}          = '12345';     # Identifies action


Setting -ols/-nolc don't seem to have any effect on this.

And now I've found what I was looking for:


-ssc -sscp=#

This sets "static side comments", and sets the identifier for those to the usual # character

docs: http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/perltidy.html#static_side_comments

This lines up the equals but leaves the comments alone. The only time the equals doesn't get lined up is if that would make the line longer than the -l setting, which is fair enough.