Pretty

pretty is the SmartEiffel pretty-printer (code beautifier) for Eiffel source files. In a normal installation, it is invoked by the command se pretty.

Synopsis

• se pretty [options] <source_file>

The source_file argument must be some existing Eiffel source file path as for example "integer.e" or "lib/kernel/integer.e".

One can specify more than one file name at a time in order to apply the pretty command on all the specified files. All the corresponding files are reprinted in a pretty way.

There are four modes of pretty-printing: -zen, -default, -end and -parano mode. Only one mode can be selected and the mode -default is the default mode.

Options for pretty printing

-help	Display a short summary of the command line syntax, as well as a complete list of pretty's options.
-verbose	Display (an enormous amount of) information during the process: a complete list of files loaded, and so on.
-version	Display the SmartEiffel version number.
-zen	Print as few as possible (i.e. very compact output). No end mark comment for routines, no end comments for statements (if, inspect, debug, ...).
-default	The default mode. This is close to what we are using for our library.
-end	The same printing as -default but also print end mark comments for all routines.
-parano	Same printing as -end but also print end mark comments for all statements (if, inspect, debug, ...).
-no_warning	Suppress output for all warning messages (error messages are still printed).

Security and Backup File

For the security of your sources files, a backup file is created before writing the new file. The backup file name is "foo.bak" when source file name is "foo.e". The backup file is written in the same directory as the source file.

If an old backup file already exists before pretty printing, the pretty command exits with an error message.

To be sure that the pretty-printing is correct, the output file is parsed again. Even if the second parsing gives no errors, backup file is not removed. Thus you can recompile and test your Eiffel program to check that the beautified files did not break anything, before removing the backup files yourself.