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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

Huh? You know that a linter is not a formatter, right?

Pretty sure he does. His comment only makes sense in that context.

I guess I just don't see that. perltidy and lint(s) are completely nonoverlapping, to my knowledge. Something that can reformat your code doesn't even do the same job as a linter.

I'm not really following you. It's very common for linters to flag stylistic and formatting issues.

Ah well, perhaps it's just a difference in experience. I've never used a linter (there are countless linters) that fixed indentation, arranged if statements, and inserted newlines to wrap long lines. Nor has a formatter ever helped me find the sort of issues I use a linter to find.

There is overlap. I once lost a fair amount of time because some dimwit predecessor thought putting anything other than a space after commas was acceptable. (It sounds ridiculous but it's true. I can explain if you care.)

So: a formatter will, for example, make sure your lines are indented to some standard amount of indentation, a linter will bitch if they are not, and both the formatter and the linter should DTRT when they identify certain indefensible coding practices.

I wouldn't want to reach for lint to handle formatting, that is what indent is for. That is to say, lint should not complain that the if should contain a space before the (.

I agree in that case, but when it comes to commas, using spaces in a certain way is objectively better.

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