How does it work?

This tool aligns carets or selections into a vertical line by inserting spaces. It's useful for formatting code or text to improve readability and visual alignment.

The alignment follows these rules:

Each line is processed separately
The tool looks for a special marker (default: |) that represents the caret position
It finds the line with the rightmost caret position
It adds spaces to all other lines to align their carets with the rightmost one
Lines without a caret marker are left unchanged
You can choose to keep or remove the caret markers in the output

Example

Consider this code with caret markers (|) at different positions:

var x| = 10;
const longVariableName| = "hello";
let y| = true;
const anotherVar| = 42;

After aligning the carets (with markers preserved):

var x                 | = 10;
const longVariableName| = "hello";
let y                 | = true;
const anotherVar      | = 42;

After aligning the carets (with markers removed):

var x                  = 10;
const longVariableName = "hello";
let y                  = true;
const anotherVar       = 42;

Parameters

Text with carets: The input text containing caret markers to align
Caret marker: The character or string that represents the caret position (default: |)
Preserve caret markers: Option to keep or remove the caret markers in the output

This tool is useful for:

Aligning variable assignments in code
Creating neatly formatted tables or columns
Aligning comments in code
Formatting data for better readability
Preparing text for presentations or documentation

Common Use Cases

Aligning Variable Assignments

Before:

var x = 10;
const longVariableName = "hello";
let y = true;
const anotherVar = 42;

After (with = as the marker):

var x               = 10;
const longVariableName = "hello";
let y               = true;
const anotherVar    = 42;

Tip:

You can use any character or short string as the caret marker. Common choices include "|", "=", "//", or even a unique sequence like "###" that doesn't appear elsewhere in your text.