[cb321]

GNU indent was already at version 1.9.1 by 1994: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/indent/

If you grab that version and unpack it and look at /OChangelog then it seems to date back until at least 1989, same as Python itself.

That was for C source, of course. I expect there were pre-GNU indent variants, perhaps posted on comp.sources.unix and maybe some commercial things as part of very expensive compiler packages.

I would say that running autoformatters in any kind of routine way was pretty rare. EDIT: but I think ascribing the language design to commonality or not is probably ahistorical. Even today it's a rather passionate debate. And even at the time, Lisp - the poster child of copy-paste friendly PLangs - was routinely autoformatted within Emacs', but that was not enough for people to not find Lisp code "ugly".

[jibal]

While formatters for non-C languages may have existed, no auto formatters existed. And yes, this discussion is completely ahistorical.