The comment package adds spaces to comment lines even if spaces are absent from 'commentstring'

[lkintact]

Steps to reproduce

If I have 'commentstring' set to /*\ %s\ */, pressing gcc on string results in /* string */, which is expected. However if 'commentstring' is /*%s*/ (which is default), I get the same result, i.e. /* string */. Shouldn't it be /*string*/ instead?

Expected behaviour

.

Version of Vim

9.1.443

Environment

.

Logs and stack traces

No response

[chrisbra]

The plugin does add intentionally padding around the %s. I suppose this is intentionally to have it look better.

vim/runtime/pack/dist/opt/comment/autoload/comment.vim

Line 19 in 0a08306

var cms = substitute(substitute(&cms, '\S\zs%s\s*', ' %s', ''), '%s\ze\S', '%s ', '')

please confirm @habamax

[habamax]

That is supposed to work this way.

[lkintact]

I think /*%s*/ should generate spaceless comments - what if the user doesn't need those spaces? If (s)he does, (s)he can always set 'commentstring' to /*\ %s\ */. But if you disagree, maybe it would be helpful to mention that auto-padding behavior in the docs so as to avoid confusion?

[chrisbra]

Let's just document the current practice.

[nickspoons]

I must say I don't really understand the logic here. Why not just have the plugin respect 'commentstring'? That simplifies the plugin code and gives users full control over their output. Otherwise users cannot use the comment plugin to add comments with no whitespace, which they may have both functional and cosmetic reasons for.

[chrisbra]

The idea was to have a simple comment plugin, that works well for most use cases and produces "nice" comments. It wasn't meant to give users the chance to adjust every tiny little bit. If you have this need, you can install another one of the many plugins.

If there is a reason (aside from aesthetics) to have comments not being white space aligned, than let's hear it and I am open for a PR, but so far this seems like a minor (cosmetic) issue only.

[nickspoons]

Thanks Christian. After thinking a bit more about it I can also see why it doesn't make sense to pay too much attention to 'commentstring' spacing; because the plugin needs to be able to apply to multiple lines:

function AgeOfVim()
  return systemlist('ps -o etime:1= -p ' . getpid())[0]
endfunction

When this is commented with gcip the comments are aligned, so 'commentstring' was never going to be applied directly to the return... line anyway:

" function AgeOfVim()
"   return systemlist('ps -o etime:1= -p ' . getpid())[0]
" endfunction

Sorry for the noise, and thanks for the continued diligent work and maintainership.