Regarding the second one, a formatter shouldn’t be changing the AST. At most inserting parentheses/braces/semicolons for clarity, which doesn’t change the AST structurally (or, depending on one‘s definition of “AST”, doesn’t change it at all).
Perhaps, but it is absolutely relevant. Most of the horrible formatting results are due to the formatter trying really hard when the user really should introduce a variable.
True, formatters can only do so much. The purpose formatters is not to guarantee readable code, but to guarantee uniform code. Use of a formatter doesn’t relieve a programmer from taking care that the code is readable. But it ensures that everyone is using the same formatting conventions.
