DELETE TRAILING WHITESPACE

by Ingo Karkat

DESCRIPTION

This plugin deletes whitespace at the end of each line, on demand via the :DeleteTrailingWhitespace command, or automatically when the buffer is written.

SEE ALSO

This plugin leverages the superior detection and customization facilities of the companion ShowTrailingWhitespace.vim plugin (vimscript #3966), though it can also be used without it if you're not interested in highlighting and customizing.

To quickly locate the occurrences of trailing whitespace, you can use the companion JumpToTrailingWhitespace.vim plugin (vimscript #3968).

RELATED WORKS

The basic substitution commands as well as more elaborate scriptlets, as the idea of automating this can be found in this VimTip: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Remove_unwanted_spaces There are already a number of plugins that define such a command; most bundle this functionality together with the highlighting of trailing whitespace. However, most of them cannot consider whitespace exceptions and are not as flexible.

• trailing-whitespace (vimscript #3201) defines :FixWhitespace.
• bad-whitespace (vimscript #3735) defines :EraseBadWhitespace.
• Trailer Trash (vimscript #3938) defines :Trim.
• StripWhiteSpaces (vimscript #4016) defines :StripWhiteSpaces and strips automatically, too, but is way more simple than this plugin.
• WhiteWash (vimscript #3920) provides functions that also can strip visible ^M and sequential whitespacw between words.
• strip_trailing_whitespace.vim (vimscript #5695) is another alternative which offers a command and configurable mappings.
• vim-strip-trailing-whitespace (vimscript #5867) limits the automatic adaptation to edited lines, to avoid introducing additional changes into the diff.

USAGE

:[range]DeleteTrailingWhitespace
                        Delete all trailing whitespace in the current buffer
                        or [range].

INSTALLATION

The code is hosted in a Git repo at https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-DeleteTrailingWhitespace You can use your favorite plugin manager, or "git clone" into a directory used for Vim packages. Releases are on the "stable" branch, the latest unstable development snapshot on "master".

This script is also packaged as a vimball. If you have the "gunzip" decompressor in your PATH, simply edit the *.vmb.gz package in Vim; otherwise, decompress the archive first, e.g. using WinZip. Inside Vim, install by sourcing the vimball or via the :UseVimball command.

vim DeleteTrailingWhitespace*.vmb.gz
:so %

To uninstall, use the :RmVimball command.

DEPENDENCIES

• Requires Vim 7.0 or higher.
• Requires the ingo-library.vim plugin (vimscript #4433), version 1.036 or higher.
• The ShowTrailingWhitespace.vim plugin (vimscript #3966) complements this script, but is not required. With it, this plugin considers the whitespace exceptions for certain filetypes.

CONFIGURATION

For a permanent configuration, put the following commands into your vimrc:

This plugin doesn't come with predefined mappings, but if you want some, you can trivially define them yourself:

nnoremap <Leader>d$ :<C-u>%DeleteTrailingWhitespace<CR>
vnoremap <Leader>d$ :DeleteTrailingWhitespace<CR>

By default, trailing whitespace is processed before writing the buffer when it has been detected and is currently being highlighted by the ShowTrailingWhitespace.vim plugin. To turn off the automatic deletion of trailing whitespace, use:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace = 0

If you want to eradicate all trailing whitespace all the time, use:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace = 1

Also see the following configuration option to turn off the confirmation queries in case you want unconditional, fully automatic removal.

For processing, the default asks whether to remove or keep the whitespace (either for the current buffer, or all buffers in the entire Vim session, or for the current buffer across time and Vim sessions). Alternatively, the plugin can just abort the write, unless ! is given:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action = 'abort'

To automatically eradicate the trailing whitespace, use:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action = 'delete'

When the plugin is configured to ask the user, and she gives a negative answer, the ShowTrailingWhitespace.vim highlighting is turned off automatically; when you ignore it, there's typically no sense in still highlighting it. If you don't want that, keep the highlighting via:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_ChoiceAffectsHighlighting = []

or selectively keep the highlighting by removing responses from:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_ChoiceAffectsHighlighting =
\ ['No', 'Never', 'Never ever', 'Never ever recalled', 'Never ever highlight', 'Nowhere']

The global detection and processing behavior can be changed for individual buffers by setting the corresponding buffer-local variables.

CONTRIBUTING

Report any bugs, send patches, or suggest features via the issue tracker at https://github.com/inkarkat/vim-DeleteTrailingWhitespace/issues or email (address below).

HISTORY

1.10 03-Feb-2020

• ENH: Add "Forever" and "Never ever" choices that persist the response for the current file across Vim session.
• ENH: If ShowTrailingWhitespace.vim (version 1.10 or higher) is installed, offer a "Never ever highlight" choice that turns off highlighting for the current file persistently across Vim sessions.
• CHG: Make asking for action (instead of aborting) the default action, now that we offer many more choices, and the whole persistent recall of responses only works there. It's also more friendly and transparent towards first-time users of the plugin. To restore the original behavior:

let g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action = 'abort'

• CHG: g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_ChoiceAffectsHighlighting now is a List of possible responses that if missing will keep the highlighting for that particular response.
• BUG: DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action checks window-local instead of buffer-local override. Thanks to Enno for noticing.
• Add dependency to ingo-library (vimscript #4433).

You need to separately install ingo-library (vimscript #4433) version 1.036 (or higher)!

1.06 24-Feb-2015

• FIX: Warning for nomodifiable buffer does not consider buffer-local b:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action (after version 1.05).

1.05 12-Dec-2014

• Corner case: Avoid "E21: Cannot make changes, 'modifiable' is off" on a nomodifiable buffer when g:DeleteTrailingWhitespace_Action = 'delete', and instead just show a warning. Thanks to Enno Nagel for raising this issue.

1.04 14-Dec-2013

• Minor: Make substitute() robust against 'ignorecase'.
• Minor: Correct lnum for no-modifiable buffer check.
• Handle local exception regular expressions that contain a "/" character. This must be escaped for the :substitute/ command.

1.03 19-Apr-2012

• Handle readonly and nomodifiable buffers by printing just the warning / error, without the multi-line function error.

1.02 14-Apr-2012

• FIX: Avoid polluting search history.

1.01 04-Apr-2012

• Define command with -bar so that it can be chained.

1.00 16-Mar-2012

• First published version.

0.01 05-Mar-2012

• Started development.

Copyright: (C) 2012-2020 Ingo Karkat - The VIM LICENSE applies to this plugin.

Maintainer: Ingo Karkat <[email protected]>