The goal of this exercise is to learn how to use clang-format to format your
code automatically and uniformly.
Consider hello.cc:
[studentNM@esc-XY ~]$ cd esc17/hands-on/basic
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ cat hello.cc
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char*argv[]){std::cout<<"Hello, ";...
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ clang-format hello.cc
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
std::cout << "Hello, ";
if (argc > 1)
std::cout << argv[1];
...
Note how the * in char *argv is attached to the argument. Instead we want it
attached to the type as in char* argv.
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ clang-format -style="{PointerAlignment: Left}" hello.cc
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
std::cout << "Hello, ";
if (argc > 1)
std::cout << argv[1];
...
Much better. We can save our settings in a configuration file, starting from a dump of the default settings.
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ clang-format -dump-config -style="{PointerAlignment: Left}" > .clang-format
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ clang-format hello.cc
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
std::cout << "Hello, ";
if (argc > 1)
std::cout << argv[1];
...
If we use the same .clang-format for all our projects, it can also be saved in
${HOME}.
To format a file in place use the -i option.
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ clang-format -i hello.cc
[studentNM@esc-XY basic]$ cat hello.cc
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
std::cout << "Hello, ";
if (argc > 1)
std::cout << argv[1];
...