Rule proposal: Readability rule - Operator placement for wrapped expressions

(EOL = End of Line, BOL = Beginning of Line)

I think StyleCop should dictate (or at least try to dictate) the position of operators. An example:

this is on one line, and it’s ok…

if (true && false) 
{ 
} 

But on two lines?

if (true && 
false) 

or

if (true 
&& false) 

the same for +, -, *, /

And then there are ? (with 😃 and ??.

I think that these operators should be put at End of Line, so that if the second operand is a brace the line begins with the brace.

last but not least is the “.” operator. Here I think it’s easier. It should go on the new line for the same reason as the “this” that is necessary. When you press “.” the vs shows you the list of the properties/methods/fields of the object.

So it should be:

var temp3 = new int[5]
.Cast<long>()
.Cast<int>();

Originally posted by xanatos http://stylecop.codeplex.com/workitem/6791

[nahk-ivanov]

In our team we ran in to this issue due to assignment operator. Half of the legacy code has it placed on the next line like so:

var myVariable
    = "Hello world";

We would definitely like to invest in StyleCop to have a rule (+auto-fix for this), so that we can quickly clean in up. Was there ever a consensus on a particular set of operators and how majority of people would want them to be formatted?

From what I understand current preference is:

fooBar
   .Method()
   .SomeOtherMethod();

fooBar
    ?.Method()
    ?.SomeOtherMethod();

var myVariable =
    "Hello world";

Maybe we can start with this set and expand it later, once/if we reach an agreement?

As to the name, since we want some operators on the previous line and some on the next - I think we have two options:

1. Add one rule Binary operators should be placed correctly (or remove binary, as Elvis, aka ?:, is not binary and we may include it in the future)
2. Add two rules:
   • one for Binary operators should be placed on the line with first operand
   • two for Binary operators should be placed on the line with second operand

My vote is for Operators should be placed correctly.

---

I understand people may have different preferences, but I thinking allowing people to choose how it should be formatted is defeating the purpose of common coding styles. Yeah, it works if you only care about your project, but if you work on multiple projects it doesn’t help much with readability. Another problem is when you want to integrate two different code-bases together and they use different styles.

In my opinion, we want coding styles to be attached to the language, rather than the project.

[Przemyslaw-W]

Why does

int foo = Bar
    ?.Baz
    ?.Blech;

look wrong to you? It immediately gives you proper info that Baz and Blech are called conditionally. No need to scan end of previous line to see this.