How to delete all whitespace up to the first non-whitespace character?

Question

I'm looking for an emacs function that will delete all whitespace from the cursor position (including newlines) until the first non-whitespace character.

For example, if my cursor is positioned at the end of the first line:

main(arg1,
     arg2)

The delete function would result in:

main(arg1,arg2)

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 28 '18 at 06:22

You might find the hungry-delete package useful. I personally bind C-cdelete to delete whitespace after point, and C-cbackspace to delete whitespace before point like so

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <backspace>") 'hungry-delete-backward)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <deletechar>") 'hungry-delete-forward)

update: as of 12.2018 function definitions changed hence:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <backspace>") 'c-hungry-delete-backward)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <deletechar>") 'c-hungry-delete-forward)

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '15 at 13:16

4

I use this quite often:

(defun join-line* ()
  "Join this line with the next line deleting extra white space."
  (interactive)
  (join-line t))

(global-set-key (kbd "M-j") #'join-line*) ;; just key binding I use…

answered Sep 06 '15 at 13:16

Mark Karpov

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I think it would be nice to note that this is equivalent to vanilla `C-u M-^`. – Basil Dec 28 '18 at 11:15
Note also that `join-line` (aka `delete-indentation`) often leaves one space character after point. – Basil Dec 28 '18 at 11:18

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 28 '18 at 11:23

2

Yet another solution

(defun foo ()
  (interactive)
  (delete-region (point)
                 (+ (save-excursion (skip-chars-forward " \n"))
                    (point))))

edited Dec 28 '18 at 11:23

Basil

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answered Sep 06 '15 at 15:39

Name

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How to delete all whitespace up to the first non-whitespace character?

3 Answers3