Making an autocmd conditional

Question

I have the official black plugin installed in vim. I have in my vimrc:

au FileType python autocmd BufWritePre <buffer> Black

This works fine, but I would like to be able to disable the autoformatting in some situations. I tried this:

au FileType python autocmd BufWritePre <buffer> if get(b:, 'black_enabled', 1) | Black | endif

That successfully disables formatting if I let b:black_enabled=0, but when black_enabled=1 (or is unset), that results in:

Error detected while processing function black#Black:
line    4:
E684: list index out of range: 1
E684: list index out of range: 1

...and then Black appears to run anyway.

What's wrong with my syntax that it's causing errors?

How is the Black command defined? Does it have the -bar attribute? If it doesn't it will see | endif as its arguments. You can check whether the -bar attribute was used by running :command Black and checking if the first column contains a |. — Jürgen Krämer, Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 7:42
The function is defined here. I'm a little confused by your comment; I thought | was the vimscript command separator (like ; in the shell), so I wouldn't expect a function definition to influence how it behaves. Is that incorrect? — larsks, Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 12:50
Not all commands see | as a separator; some see it as part of their arguments. Most notorious examples for the latter are :g and :argdo, :bufdo and :windo. — Jürgen Krämer, Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 12:57
The link you provided points to the definition of the Black() function. What you need to check is the definition of the :Black command here. It does not include the -bar parameter, so :Black will see | as part of its arguments. — Jürgen Krämer, Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 13:00
You might want to try if :command! -bar -nargs=* -complete=customlist,BlackComplete Black :call black#Black(<f-args>) before the au-command fixes your problem. If yes you can ask the maintainer(s) to include this change. — Jürgen Krämer, Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 14:36

larsks · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-24 16:35:25Z

1

The solution I've come up with for now (that doesn't require any changes to the Black plugin) is to just call the underlying function directly:

au FileType python autocmd BufWritePre <buffer> if get(b:, 'black_enabled', 1) | call black#Black() | endif

This seems to work as intended.

answered Jan 24, 2022 at 16:35

larsks

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