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

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.

Maintainer: Ingo Karkat <ingo@karkat.de>

README.md

DELETE TRAILING WHITESPACE

DESCRIPTION

SEE ALSO

RELATED WORKS