Right-align numbers

[geroldmeisinger]

What you think about this:

public→int→myint→=→123
protected→float→myfloat→=→0.5
private→string→mystr→=→"abc"

checks if the subsequent (non-space) character is a number and right-aligns them

public↔    int↔    myint↔   =↔ 123
protected↔ float↔  myfloat↔ =↔   0.5
private↔   string↔ mystr↔   =↔ "abc"

in most programming languages numbers can be defined as:

integer        123
float           +3.14
floatshort        .5
exponential     -5e6
hex         0xCAFE
octal        0o755 (ignore old notation: o755)
binary      0b1010

Keep it simple, stupid!

yayaya... but it is really simple! ... conceptually

[geroldmeisinger]

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=gerold-meisinger.elastic-tabstops-lite-redux

try the new version my vscode extension. it has an option to align numbers.

[geroldmeisinger]

okay... I opened a big can of worms :D
this is more subtle than I first thought but I still think it is possible and a good idea. the strongest argument is that right-aligned numbers are entirely optional for the user and the editor because it doesn't change the alignment of adjacent lines and the next tabstops and hence doesn't require a new definition of elastic tabstops.

I wrote about everything I found so far in my documentation: https://elastic-tabstops.readthedocs.io/implementation.html#right-aligning-numbers

• there are multiple complexity levels of what a number is
• you need to separate integer, fractional and string part
• scientific notation is ambiguous
• some languages support suffixes and digit separators
• string-suffixed numbers can be treated differently
• strings can be aligned in 10 different ways when a column contains numbers and monospaced fonts need extra treatment
• it will change where users will insert tabs