#17663·checkstyle

Indentation: missing violations for '->' and ',' in return statement continuation

Author: VeniceWishCreated Aug 20, 2025Updated Sep 18, 2026
Labelsapprovedindentationgoogle stylefalse negative

I have read check documentation: https://checkstyle.sourceforge.io/checks/whitespace/indentation.html I have downloaded the latest checkstyle from: https://checkstyle.org/cmdline.html#Download_and_Run I have executed the cli and showed it below, as cli describes the problem better than 1,000 words

Code:

bash
public class Test {
  int sum(int a, int b, int c) {
    return a
    + b     // Expected Violation (and Reported)
    + c;    // Expected Violation (and Reported)
  }

  java.util.function.Function<String, Integer> test_arrow() {
    return (String s) ->
    s.length(); // Expected Violation (but ignored)
  }

  int test_comma() {
    return sum(
    1, // Expected Violation (but ignored)
    2, // Expected Violation (but ignored)
    3  // Expected Violation (but ignored)
    );
  }
}

Config:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE module PUBLIC
          "-//Checkstyle//DTD Checkstyle Configuration 1.3//EN"
          "https://checkstyle.org/dtds/configuration_1_3.dtd">
<module name="Checker">
    <property name="localeLanguage" value="en"/>
    <module name="TreeWalker">
        <module name="Indentation">
            <property name="basicOffset" value="2"/>
            <property name="braceAdjustment" value="2"/>
            <property name="caseIndent" value="2"/>
            <property name="throwsIndent" value="4"/>
            <property name="lineWrappingIndentation" value="4"/>
            <property name="arrayInitIndent" value="2"/>
        </module>
    </module>
</module>

Cli:

$ java -jar checkstyle-10.26.1-all.jar -c config.xml Test.java
Starting audit...
[ERROR] Test.java:4:5: 'method def' child has incorrect indentation level 4, expected level should be 8. [Indentation]
[ERROR] Test.java:5:5: 'method def' child has incorrect indentation level 4, expected level should be 8. [Indentation]
Audit done.
Checkstyle ends with 2 errors.

Observed behavior: In return with +, indentation errors are correctly reported. In return with lambda arrow -> or commas ,, no indentation violations are reported, even though they are also continuation lines. This makes the behavior inconsistent: some continuation elements are checked, while others are ignored.


Update: Test that helps to reproduce problem are merged at https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/pull/20375/changes , please reuse them for quick debug of this problem