Conflicts with the Air formatter (indent size)

[eitsupi]

lintr complains about line 5 of the file formatted by Air below, but I don't know why.

func <- function() {
  if (
    isTRUE(TRUE) ||
      (isTRUE(TRUE) &&
        isTRUE(TRUE))
  ) {
    NULL
  }
}

Reprex:

lintr::lint(
  text = r"(
func <- function() {
  if (
    isTRUE(TRUE) ||
      (isTRUE(TRUE) &&
        isTRUE(TRUE))
  ) {
    NULL
  }
})"
)
#> <text>:6:8: style: [indentation_linter] Indentation should be 9 spaces but is 8 spaces.
#>         isTRUE(TRUE))
#>        ^~

^{Created on 2025-07-13 with reprex v2.1.1}

[AshesITR]

It's because of the opening parenthesis on the preceding line, which starts a hanging indent.
Without the parenthesis, the meaning would be different and the expected indentation would be the same as your snippet.

[MichaelChirico]

cc @lionel- is this something that needs to be clarified in the tidyverse guide?

[lionel-]

Maybe, but the rules used by the formatter to format operator chains are complex to describe and wouldn't fit a style guide very well I think. There are more cases that it seems lintr will not handle consistently with Air, such as: https://github.com/posit-dev/air/blob/0fc55bbbff38b114ab1e6639e961ebed20dc57c9/crates/air_r_formatter/tests/specs/r/binary_expression.R.snap#L886-L893.

While we're happy with the rules as of now, there's a very slight chance they might be updated in the future.

Given that Air itself can be used to check R code formatting, maybe lintr should no longer lint whitespace?

[MichaelChirico]

Given that Air itself can be used to check R code formatting, maybe lintr should no longer lint whitespace?

Well, {lintr} is intended to be more general than the tidyverse guide, so if anything the update would be "off by default".

wouldn't fit a style guide very well I think

One option is to include a "good" example with both styles implying the ambiguity can't be resolved. And nearby exposition should of course exhort the user to move complex conditional rules into a helper function for clarity.

[Bisaloo]

Flagging as related: #2703

[eitsupi]

Thank you all. It would be wonderful if such conflicts could be eliminated.