In Emacs, how to remove all empty lines (including tabs and spaces) in file?
Can M-x replace-regexp do the trick?
I can find the empty lines with regexp: ^[st]*$, but don't know how to replace it by deleting.
Asked
Active
Viewed 5,150 times
2 Answers
12
M-x flush-lines RET ^[[:space:]]*$ RET is probably the canonical way to do that.
Stefan
- 27,908
- 4
- 53
- 82
-
1This is more elegant. Thanks! – herbertD Oct 22 '14 at 03:25
-
7To me `M-x flush-lines RET ^$ RET` alone is able to delete empty lines – Prasanna Sep 19 '17 at 09:57
-
2@Prasanna: It depends if you consider lines that contain just a few spaces to be "empty". – Stefan Sep 19 '17 at 13:07
8
^ and $ just match starts and ends of lines, not the actual end-of-line characters. You have the explicitly type the newline in the expression to replace it.
To achieve your goal, replace-regexp
^[[:space:]]*^J
with nothing (empty text). To enter ^J, first press Control and Q, then Control and J. In the entry field, this shows up as an actual line change.
jlahd
- 6,257
- 1
- 15
- 21
-
2Thanks for the tips of ^J, I used M-x replace-regexp ^C-q C-j
solved the problem. -
Your method removed all lines returns, I just want to remove the empty lines. – herbertD Oct 21 '14 at 06:31
-
1True, forgot the `^` in the beginning (edited now). To match your original spec "including tabs and spaces" you do need the `[[:space:]]*` part, though. – jlahd Oct 21 '14 at 06:34