How to make vim not break strings when autoformating?

Question

I have a list of string values that I would like to autoformat but vim breaks the strings if there is a space inside of it.

Can this be fixed somehow?

example

    "sdasda", "asdasdasd", "afasfasf", "asdasda asdasd", "asdasd"

becomes

    "sdasda", "asdasdasd", "afasfasf", "asdasda
    asdasd", "asdasd"

but I want

    "sdasda", "asdasdasd", "afasfasf",
    "asdasda asdasd", "asdasd"

Extra bonus: It would be nice for it to support different string formatings (Python, ". ' and """)

Answer 1

This can be implemented via a custom 'formatexpr' (that checks for an unclosed string quote before the cursor, and then performs the reformatting from that position instead of the insert position).

However, I haven't seen any custom 'formatexp' in my many years of Vim use, so unless something turns up here or on vim_use [archives], you probably have to implement such a thing yourself (which is non-trivial if you also want to support re-formatting via gq, and requires a decent knowledge of Vimscript).