Trailing whitespace can be a real pain - especially when diffing changes between two versions of a file. Fortunately for vim users, there is an easy way to eliminate unwanted trailing whitespace without having to think about it.
Your .vimrc file is typically located in your home directory. So you can edit it by typing:
John
vim ~/.vimrcThen adding the following line to your .vimrc will ensure that every time you save a file (:w), it will remove all trailing whitespace.
autocmd BufWritePre * :%s/\s\+$//eTrailing whitespace will now be removed from the file when using the Vim editor.
Any vim user knows that there are underlying concepts worth understanding. While learning the specific keystrokes is useful, I find that knowing the why is crucial to actually adopting new features.
