Tip #72: Remove unwanted empty lines

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created: June 5, 2001 11:11 complexity: basic

author: Volker Duetsch as of Vim: 5.7

Sometimes to improve the readability of the document I insert empty lines, which will be later removed. To get rid off them try: :%g/^$/d This will remove a l l empty line in the document. Some other tipps you can find under www.linuxclass.de/vim.phtml

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Additional Notes

Anonymous, July 13, 2001 20:42

I know this may sound like trolling, but this makes me wonder why there's not an option to rate suggestions "Detremental".

Anonymous, January 13, 2004 1:00

Detrimental? In my opinion tips like these are useful since they show up nicely when you for example google for this little hint you just needed.

Anonymous, January 9, 2005 15:01

This is exactly what I was looking for !

[email protected], March 23, 2005 12:02

Another way to do it especially if you have spaces or tab characters in your empty lines: :%s/^[\ \t]*\n//g This pretty much says: replace whole lines that "may" contain spaces or tabs with nothing globally (g). You can add a "c" (for confirm) after the "g" to confirm on every erased line if you don't trust the regexp. Greets, Roumen Semov.

[email protected], July 5, 2005 10:34

Thank you much. This was exactly what I needed to know.

sator at npr dot org, October 12, 2005 8:40

this was exactly what I was needing. I knew it was something simple; just couldn't remember the exact syntax.

Anonymous, September 3, 2006 23:38

Thanks!

Anonymous, November 8, 2006 6:28

on some machines, :%s/\n\+/\n/g

[email protected], November 8, 2006 6:32

on some machines, :%s/\n\+/\n/g replaces all line breaks with a ^@ i can't find the reason (already looked for line break type and encoding)

Anonymous, November 8, 2006 6:34

:%s/$\n$\n\+/\1/g that works on those machines




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