formatoinut

formatoinut is an open‑source software suite developed to provide comprehensive text and code formatting utilities for a variety of programming languages and document types. Conceived by a community of developers in 2018, the project was originally a lightweight command‑line tool aimed at simplifying the formatting of embedded SQL queries within large Java and Python codebases. Over successive releases the name was shortened from “format‐out‑nut” to the current moniker, reflecting its broadened scope.

The core features of formatoinut include syntax‑aware indentation, line‑length regulation, comment spacing, and the automatic insertion of license headers. It supports over twenty programming languages, including Java, C++, Python, Go, and several web‑related formats such as HTML, CSS, and JSON. Users may invoke the tool via a command‑line interface or integrate it into continuous‑integration pipelines through plugins for popular build systems such as Gradle, Maven, and npm.

Release 3.2.0, published in March 2025, added machine‑learning‑based style inference, allowing the formatter to adapt to project‑specific conventions without manual configuration. Version 4.0, released in September 2025, introduced an extensible plugin architecture that lets third parties contribute language modules, beautifiers, and grammar‑correctors. Documentation is hosted on the project's GitHub pages, providing examples, configuration options, and a detailed API reference.

formatoinut is distributed under the permissive MIT license, encouraging both personal and commercial adoption. Its active community maintains a mailing list and a public issue tracker, facilitating rapid issue resolution and feature requests. The project has been cited in several academic papers on software quality and acknowledged as a useful aid in modern code‑review workflows.