Vim Tips Collection

Delete blank lines in a file

:g/^$/d

• g = Global, full file
• ^ is line start, $ is line end
• D means to delete the

This can only be matched to a blank line without a white space character, if you want to delete a blank line with whitespace, use:

:g/^\s*$/d

• A \s* represents 0 or more whitespace characters. The empty character pack includes spaces, tab.

Delete line trailing white space character

:%s/\s*$//g

Delete at least the end of the line extra white space character.

Or:

:%s/\ \s*$//g

Requires at least one space at the end of the line so that the end-of-line character $ is highlighted after the replacement is avoided.

Vim Tips Collection