[clang-format]: Feature Request add option to ReferenceAlignment when using east-const

[LucHermitte]

It would be nice to have a way to have an extra option to ReferenceAlignment (and PointerAlignment I guess) when QualifierAlignment is set to Right in order to remove any space between const and &, and still add spaces before & the rest of the time.

AFAIK, it is currently (*) impossible to format in the following way:

SomeType & lvref;       // space before "&"
SomeType && rvref;      // space before "&&"
SomeType const& cref;   // no-space before "&", but before "const&"
SomeType const&& crvref // same thing

Indeed, if we select Middle for ReferenceAlignment, an extra space will be added to const &

(*) tested with clang-format 19, and the documentation of clang-format-21 shows no difference on the topic.

[llvmbot]

@llvm/issue-subscribers-clang-format

Author: Luc Hermitte (LucHermitte)

It would be nice to have a way to have an extra option to `ReferenceAlignment` (and `PointerAlignment` I guess) when `QualifierAlignment` is set to `Right` in order to remove any space between `const` and `&`, and still add spaces before `&` the rest of the time.

AFAIK, it is currently (*) impossible to format in the following way:

SomeType & lvref;       // space before "&"
SomeType && rvref;      // space before "&&"
SomeType const& cref;   // no-space before "&", but before "const&"
SomeType const&& crvref // same thing

Indeed, if we select Middle for ReferenceAlignment, an extra space will be added to const &

(*) tested with clang-format 19, and the documentation of clang-format-21 shows no difference on the topic.