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Does emacs have a built in function for removing trailing spaces in a buffer? I want to remove trailing whitespace at the end of all the lines in a buffer.

Dan
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vfclists
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    Removing them from what? strings? buffer text? Where have you searched for an answer before coming here? – Stefan Jun 22 '17 at 16:30
  • Please clarify if you are looking for a function that deletes trailing whitespace from a buffer (as @Ryan's answer addresses), or if you're looking to remove whitespace from a string, or something else. – Dan Jun 23 '17 at 13:04
  • delete-horizontal-space ? – AAAfarmclub Jun 26 '17 at 00:39
  • I am new to emacs and not sure of the appropriate terminology, but from the questions here I believe it must mean trailing spaces in a buffer. – vfclists Jun 26 '17 at 02:40
  • Thanks for clarifying! We've reopened the question, although it looks like you've got the answer you were looking for. – Dan Jun 26 '17 at 04:39

1 Answers1

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According to the EmacsWiki, M-x delete-trailing-whitespace will eliminate all trailing whitespace in a buffer. In Spacemacs, it is bound to SPC x d w by default

You can do it automatically for all buffers by adding the following to your init.el:

(add-hook 'before-save-hook 'delete-trailing-whitespace)

For future reference, you can search for Emacs functions within Emacs by typing M-x apropos, then typing your query. In this case, M-x apropos <RET> whitespace <RET> provides a list of functions relating to whitespace.

Stefan
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Ryan
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