Visual Studio 2010 - C# - "Ignore spaces in declaration statements" not working

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2010 and have statements that look like this:

a = 1;
ab = 12;
abc = 123;
etc...

which I would very much like to turn into this:

a   = 1;
ab  = 12;
abc = 123;
etc...

without Visual Studio then turning them back to to the first example when ending the statement with a semi-colon or Pressing Ctrl-K + F (Format selected lines).

I have checked the box Tools->Options->Text Editor->C#->Formatting->Spacing->"Ignore spaces in declaration statements" but it doesn't help. It only helps for real declaration when I am creating a new variable. That is, it works on the following block:

int a   = 1;
int ab  = 12;
int abc = 123;
etc...

But I really (also) need an option "Ignore spaces in assignment statements". How do a I do that? I have tried to install "Align Assignment" (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/0cc34d69-c6f1-41e3-ac6e-5de071b3edc8) and sure enough, it aligns the rows, but then Visual Studio de-aligns them automatically when formatting the text file or editing the rows.

Secularism

Personally I found it much more useful to learn new IDE rules, than to pass my old IDE experience over years through. For me first example looks natural and accepted, while second.. I would reformat it, but then your question subject get lost ;) – Gulgee

@Gulgee I don't know what you mean with "learn new IDE rules" but I am bound to VS2010 version at the moment in this project. Also, when having many lines of code with long assignments it really does wonders when one can align them like I want to. So, I do not know why one would want to reformat it? – Secularism

I was aligning variables like this back in old days (Borland C 3.1). Since VS I stick to auto-formatting offered by its editor. Few years later I got used to it. It might be easier to get used to it than to fight the system, that's what I mean. Btw, you are not alone. But be ready whenever copy/pasting your code into public what it gets reformatted =P – Gulgee

@Gulgee Ok, I get your point, but putting the formatting preferences aside, in my post I merely wonder why it behaves like it does; since there is that setting in Visual Studio called "Ignore spaces in assignment statement" and it works for my third example, but not for the second. So I was wondering if I had missed some option for the second example or how one should do to get the alignment that I want? – Secularism

Have you tried: codealignment.com ? I find it makes my life easier when dealing with all my alignment needs :) – Snaky

@Snaky Thanks for the tip! No, I have not tried it yet. But the thing is that I have found a tool that re-aligns the code as I want to, but Visual Studio reverts the alignment as I mention in my post in the lower section. – Secularism

so, when does it actually "deformat" it ? straight away? when you save, close brackets, put a ; ? – Snaky

@Snaky I cite my original post: "[...] without Visual Studio then turning them back to to the first example when ending the statement with a semi-colon or Pressing Ctrl-K + F (Format selected lines)." That is, as soon as I edit the line or re-format the code by Ctrl+K Ctrl+F or if I simply edit the indented line of code and put a semicolon it immediately breaks the indentation. – Secularism

Answer 1

This was answered in a duplicate question that is linked above. I have verified that it works. The important missing part is the operator option. Since I can't comment and vote, here is the solution copied from viktorcpp:

Tools|Options|C#|Formatting

I. Ignore spaces in declaration statements <<-- check this

AND

II. Set spacing for operators Insert space... Ignore spaces ... <<-- check this

Ugly

This mostly works, but for ternary operators (myVar = someVarIsTrue ? 1 : 0) everything after the ? will no longer be aligned on save (but using these options, everything before it is aligned) – Purdah

Answer 2

The settings that I'm aware of would be to automatically format on ;, } and paste.
You can disable them to avoid formatting on those.

This is from VS 2013, but I'm sure 2010 will have something similar:

I usually don't have issues with reformatting, since I'll first write the code / method, and then simply use the code alignment to align on a specific = or . or ,.

You'll have to avoid the formatting (CTRL-K,F), but I can't remember really needing it on a daily basis (unless I get some really bad code from somewhere ...)

Other than that, I usually use Sublime for some other specific uses since I love the multi cursors, and once you get use to it, it's sometimes easier to paste into sublime, edit, and paste back.

Hope this helped.

Snaky

Yes, disabling would probably fix the issue, but I don't want to diasble since I want it to do the re-formatting on semi-colon etc - just not ruin my aligned assignments. Also, this is very much my case: going through massive amounts of code where I really would like to do (Ctrl+K,F) often without it ruining the alignments. In the options I have enabled the Tools->Options->Text Editor->C#->Formatting->Spacing->"Ignore spaces in declaration statements" but I can not figure out why it is only "declaration statements". I want exactly the same functionality but "Assignment statements" as well :/ – Secularism

sounds like you have a niche for writing an extension for VS then :) No idea how easy it'll be though... hopefully somebody else knows more and can shed light on your problem – Snaky

Thanks for your help though, you are right, I have been thinking of writing an extension, but right now there's no real time available for it. There must be progress made continuousely to the code. – Secularism

been there, done that, i have the equivalent of the dead aeroplanes junk yards you see in movies, only it's a folder with projects i wanted to do :) – Snaky