Avoid Visual Studio autoformatting code in specific region

Question

When using an .editorconfig to configure formatting and enabling automatic formatting (or running dotnet format, is there any way to suppress the formatting for a specific region/block of code?

E.g. I have one file with 1000 constants defined which are aligned in neat columns. For such exceptions I want to use something like

class Example
{
#preserve-format
   // A block I want automatic formatting to just ignore
   const int A      = 123;
   const int Longer = 234;
   const int ...
   ...
#end-preserve-format

   // Formatter works normally here
   public void Foo() 
   { 
   } 
}

Is there anything that will accomplish this?

Answer 1

Yes, you can use #pragma

class Example
{
#pragma warning disable format
   // A block I want automatic formatting to just ignore
   const int A      = 123;
   const int Longer = 234;
   const int ...
   ...
#pragma warning restore format

   // Formatter works normally here
   public void Foo() 
   { 
   } 
}

Answer 2

As an alternative to #pragma you could split the class into two parts and apply a different formatting rule for the file that contains the neatly formatted constants, e.g.:

Example class Part 1: Example.Part1.cs

partial class Example
{
   // A block I want automatic formatting to just ignore
   const int A      = 123;
   const int Longer = 234;
   // ...
}

Then add the rest of the class into Part 2: Example.Part2.cs

partial class Example
{
   // Formatter works normally here
   public void Foo() 
   { 
   }
}

In your .editorconfig you can then override the formatting rules for the Example.Part1.cs file:

[*/**Example.Part1.cs]
csharp_space_around_declaration_statements = ignore