IdeaSift

Developers lose intentional blank lines during cleanup and YAML edits

Developers want to trim trailing spaces from code lines without removing whitespace-only lines they use while writing. Separately, yq users report that rewriting YAML removes completely blank lines they want to keep for readability and smaller diffs. The shared problem is that editing tools discard whitespace that users consider intentional, and the evidence describes uncertainty about editor behavior and a shell-function workaround rather than a standard solution.

For developers editing code and YAML. Mentioned from Aug 2019 to Apr 2022 on GitHub.

4 different people described this problem in 2 separate discussions.

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What people said

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  1. Also, I'm not sure if that setting takes this into account or not, but I'd be interested in removing whitespace at the end of non-empty lines, but preserving whitespace-only lines. I never add extra tabs or spaces after a line of code, but I do use whitespace-only lines to navigate easier while I'm writing code
  2. This is exactly what I'd love to have. As far as I know there sadly isn't a built-in solution for this right now
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