Can clang-format force bracing on all control statement bodies?

Question

IE, this:

if (x > 5)
  return test;

Would always become:

if (x > 5)
{
  return test;
}

I'm not talking about the brace style (Allman, GNU, Whiteman, etc) I just mean having the braces there at all.

There is something to prevent/enable single-line control statements like:

if (x > 5) return test;

which is AllowShortBlocksOnASingleLine, but that's not what I'm looking for here.

If it works on clang 7 that's ideal, but if not let me know.

Answer 1

I agree with dovedevic that clang-format can't do this currently. Another alternative to consider is clang-tidy. You can force braces around control statements using this:

clang-tidy -checks='-*,readability-braces-around-statements' -fix-errors myfile.cpp

Explanation:

• The -* suppresses all checks
• Then readability-braces-around-statements enables that one check
• Then -fix-errors tells clang-tidy to fix any issues it finds, even if compilation errors were found

See the documentation for more information.

Answer 2

The upcoming clang 15 provides the option InsertBraces, which should do exactly what you ask for.

Description:

Insert braces after control statements (if, else, for, do, and while) in C++ unless the control statements are inside macro definitions or the braces  would enclose preprocessor directives.

(https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ClangFormatStyleOptions.html)