Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals?

will_ has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

At work we've recently tried to agree on a set of perltidy rules. We came up with these:

-i=4        # 4 character indents in blocks
-pt=2       # "horizontal tightness"
-wls='=>'   # ensure there's always space to the left of =>
-wrs='=>'   # and always to the right of =>
-vtc=0      # always break before a closing token
-l=79       # 79 characters wide please
-nolc       # no "outdenting" for long comments - indent them properly
-nolq       # no "outdenting" for long quotes/strings
-sot        # stack opening tokens - same as -sop -sohb -sosb
-sct        # stack closing tokens
[download]

But they seem to result in unexpected changes like this:

-    error(300) if $@; # 300 = GSI_BAD_ID
+    error(300) if $@;    # 300 = GSI_BAD_ID
[download]

and this:

     my $d;
     $d->{status}      = 'queued';
     $d->{description} = 'The action was successfully queued';
-    $d->{id}          = '12345'; # Identifies action request
+    $d->{id} = '12345';    # Identifies action request
[download]

So my questions are:
1) What's the point of these changes?
2) Which options control them?

I read the docs but did not find anything relevant:
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/perltidy.html#formatting_options
http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/stylekey.html

Comment on Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? Select or Download Code

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Re: Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? by Eily (Monsignor) on Oct 20, 2014 at 12:00 UTC
-msc=n, --minimum-space-to-comment=n Side comments look best when lined up several spaces to the right of code. Perltidy will try to keep comments at least n spaces to the right. The default is n=4 spaces. I don't know how to align assignments though.	[reply]
Re^2: Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 20, 2014 at 12:20 UTC
> don't know how to align assignments though. Neither me, could be a default w/o config option. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)}	[reply]
Re^3: Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? by will_ (Scribe) on Oct 20, 2014 at 13:37 UTC
To clarify, the lining up of assignments is automatic (and most agreeable). The only time it doesn't happen is when it would make the line too long.	[reply]
Re: Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 20, 2014 at 11:25 UTC
Could you please be more specific about what you consider "unexpected changes" and what your desired output looks like? your option `-nolc` mentions comments, searching the docs for `-nolc` shows `-olc, --outdent-long-comments When -olc is set, lines which are full-line (block) comments longe +r than the value maximum-line-length will have their indentation remo +ved. This is the default; use -nolc to prevent outdenting.` [download] so what is your question? Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)}	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Why does perltidy mess up whitespace before inline comments and equals? by will_ (Scribe) on Oct 20, 2014 at 13:30 UTC
Rolf, I would expect those lines not to change at all. Eily, thanks -msc pointed me in the right direction. After some more experimenting, I've found that this code: `$d->{status} = 'queued'; # something $d->{description} = 'The action'; # other thing $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action` [download] gets changed to this: `$d->{status} = 'queued'; # something $d->{description} = 'The action'; # other thing $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action` [download] ...which is definitely better in that case. But even if only the last line had a comment and I use -msc=1: `$d->{status} = 'queued'; $d->{description} = 'The action'; $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action` [download] ...it still pushes the comment way out to the right to align with some non-existent other comments. That's not necessary. `$d->{status} = 'queued'; $d->{description} = 'The action'; $d->{id} = '12345'; # Identifies action` [download] Setting -ols/-nolc don't seem to have any effect on this. And now I've found what I was looking for: `-ssc -sscp=#` [download] This sets "static side comments", and sets the identifier for those to the usual # character docs: http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/perltidy.html#static_side_comments This lines up the equals but leaves the comments alone. The only time the equals doesn't get lined up is if that would make the line longer than the -l setting, which is fair enough.	[reply] [d/l] [select]