Is there an application which will format (but not rewrite) code for readability?

November 8, 2004 5:01 PM

Does anyone know of an application (preferably mac) that will format bulk code (e.g. nested indenting for ease of reading) without trying to rewrite it into something different than it is?
posted by eljuanbobo to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

BBEdit
posted by kirkaracha at 5:04 PM on November 8, 2004

... what kind of code?
posted by kindall at 5:17 PM on November 8, 2004

Response by poster: HTML (sorry, that was me being stupid)
posted by eljuanbobo at 5:20 PM on November 8, 2004

If it's C, then use indent(1). See `man indent` (or just run: indent *.[ch])
posted by brettcar at 5:21 PM on November 8, 2004

jEdit's written in java, and it's available under the GNU General Public License.
posted by bachelor#3 at 5:23 PM on November 8, 2004

For HTML, what you want is this, which is a Mac OS X service that'll work in any Cocoa text editor. If you need a stand-alone app, this is one.
posted by kindall at 6:22 PM on November 8, 2004

BBedit doesn't suck.
posted by maniactown at 6:26 PM on November 8, 2004

emacs... Don't ask me *how* to make it happen, though.
posted by shepd at 6:40 PM on November 8, 2004

emacs... Don't ask me *how* to make it happen, though.

Behold, the single widely correct answer to any question, ever.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:05 PM on November 8, 2004 [1 favorite]

Oh. HTML? You need Tidy.
posted by majick at 7:19 PM on November 8, 2004

What majick said. Tidy, tidy, tidy for all your [X]HTML formatting needs.
posted by majcher at 7:23 PM on November 8, 2004

I concur with the above: BBedit.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:24 PM on November 8, 2004

(BBEdit includes Tidy)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:24 PM on November 8, 2004

Dude. John. You use BBEdit. I know you do.

I guess this explains why your HTML is so ugly. ;)
posted by waldo at 7:34 PM on November 8, 2004

Regarding Emacs: Select the text, Ctrl-Meta-\. Or, select the text, Meta-x, the command is indent-region. For it to work with html, you'd have to be in html mode, I would guess (Meta-x html-mode). And when you get right down to it I don't know how html indenting works in emacs.

Tidy is good too.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:02 AM on November 9, 2004

Dreamweaver :- (Commands > Apply Source Formatting)
posted by SpaceCadet at 6:37 AM on November 9, 2004