> In recent years, many language ecosystems have developed automatic code formatters to reduce the mental overhead of code readers and therefore to share code more easily. These tools work by ensuring that all code written in the same language looks the same. Some examples of these tools include gofmt for Go or mix format for Elixir. The Erlang community was lacking a tool like this, so we created a rebar3 plugin just to automatically format code.

> In this article we’ll discuss the history of the Erlang parsing and formatting tools, the challenges of developing a formatter and the resulting tool that we created. Learn how you can use it and customize it to your needs.

#erlang