Support for spaces in marbles strings

The following example can be read in Anatomy of a Test:

var e1 = hot('----a--^--b-------c--|');
var e2 = hot(  '---d-^--e---------f-----|');
var expected =      '---(be)----c-f-----|';

expectObservable(e1.merge(e2)).toBe(expected);

However, this kind of formatting is not auto-formatter friendly, and I would not follow incompatible practices. And if I recall, the Clean Code book by Robert C. Martin also advises against columned alignment.

What would work however if you let those marbles strings contain spaces. Having to trim manually is an overhead however that I would not do myself, to keep things easily readable.

Edit: I know that we already started using columned alignment in the strings. But by exceeding the boundaries of strings for columned alignment, we make this problem even worse. So all I’m saying is that we keep this special formatting inside the strings where no auto-formatter cares what we do in it.

[cartant]

Closing this because spaces have no meaning when the TestScheduler is used in run mode.

[cartant]

Note that it’s only ignored when the run method is used. The run method was introduced after this issue was opened and its behaviour is very different from that of the original TestScheduler implementation.