# Indentation

In addition to syntax highlighting, it is also possible to embed information about how code should be intended in the Syntax Language. This information is used by the language server to provide automatic indentation of source code. Two different kinds of indentation are supported: indentation by levels and indentation relative to other characters in the source. Level-based indentation is simply represented by an integer that indicates how many tabs or spaces (or any other measurement, this is decided by the editor being used) the line should start with. Indentation as another character causes Storm to point to another character already in the source code, and tell the client to indent the current line to the same level as that character.

When the editor wishes to indent a line, it requests the indentation for the first non-whitespace character of that line. Storm then traverses the syntax tree of the parsed string (or equivalently, the grammar) from the leaf node containing the character requested by the editor (the regular expression) towards the start production of the grammar. At each step, Storm examines the production to see if the token containing the requested character lies within the specified indentation range. If that is the case, Storm applies the specified indentation action. The indentation actions are as follows:

- `+` increases the indentation level one unit unless `@` or `$` has been previously applied.
- `-` decreases the indentation level one unit unless `@` or `$` has been previously applied.
- `?` increases the indentation level one unit if no other actions affecting indentation levels have been seen so far.
- `@` indicates that the current line shall be indented as the first character in the token before the range.
- `$` indicates that the current line shall be indented as the first character after the token before the range.

In the grammar, the indentation range and action are specified by enclosing one or more tokens in square brackets (`[]`), followed by the desired indentation action. For example, in Java-like languages, blocks are typically implemented as follows:

    Expr : "{" [, (Expr, )* ]+ "}";

This causes the contents of the block to be indented by one additional level compared to the code outside of the block.

The `?` action can be used to properly indent `if` statements without a block as follows:

    Expr : "if", "(", Expr, ")" [, Expr]?;

This causes the expression after the if statement to be indented by one additional level unless the production matched there contains an indent action. If the block production previously mentioned was matched, Storm will have seen other indentation action (even if they are not applied), and therefore disregards the `?` action. In case another expression is matched, it does not contain `+` or `-` actions, and therefore the `?` is applied as desired.

`@` and `$` actions can be used for aligning parameters to functions as follows:

    Fn : "[A-Za-z]", "(" [, Params, ")"]$;