How to automatically trim trailing whitespace with Notepad++

notepadtabswhitespace

I don't want to delete the empty lines completely, but I want to remove the trailing tabs and whitespaces in them. Eclipse usually does it (through a preference setting) when we save the file.

For example, the file before saving ($ = end of line):

def shuffle(list):$
    import random $
    $
    random.shuffle(list)
    $
$

… and when I save this in the editor, Eclipse does the following:

def shuffle(list):$
    import random$
$
    random.shuffle(list)
$
$

How can I automatically trim trailing whitespace with Notepad++?

Best Answer

You should be able to do a regular expression find/replace in Notepad++ using a pattern like \s+$.

There are also a few options under menu Edit -> Blank Operations that may fit your needs.

Under the "Macro" menu there's an option for "Trim trailing and save". If you need to do a regular expression it may be possible to create a macro however I've never tried them.