git - trim whitespace

Question

I've accidentally put some whitespace in my initial commit - it shows up red in git diff --color. What's the best way to get rid of the existing whitespace and how can I avoid this happening again?

I am not necessarily looking for a built-in git command. Any external program available for free on Ubuntu would also be welcome.

Solution 1

To trim trailing whitespace on all files in the current directory, use:

sed -i 's/[[:space:]]*$//' *

To warn about future whitespace errors (both trailing spaces and spaces before tabs), and to fix whitespace errors in patches, add the following code to your gitconfig file:

[core]
    whitespace = trailing-space,space-before-tab
[apply]
    whitespace = fix

Solution 2

core.whitespace instructs git to flag certain whitespace problems:

• trailing-space warns about whitespace at the end of a line or at the end of a file
• space-before-tab warns when there is a space before a tab used for indentation

apply.whitespace is used when applying a patch. It checks for whitespace errors (the ones listed above, in core.whitespace) and applies the patch after attempting to fix them (i.e., remove them).

These options go in ~/.gitconfig -- that is, a .gitconfig file at the root of your user's home directory (typically /home/user/.gitconfig on Linux, /Users/user/.gitconfig on Mac OS X, and I don't know where on Windows but I suppose somewhere in C:\Documents and Settings\user).

Solution 3

See this thread git remove trailing whitespace in new files before commit on using git rebase to strip whitespace from files that you've already committed.

Solution 4

And to trim the white spaces from all files recursively from all sub directories this can be used.

find ./* -type f -exec sed -i 's/[[:space:]]*$//' {} \;

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Comments

[xenoterracide]

awesome I didn't know git had this feature.

[ntc2]

See this question.

[Carlos Marx]

Does this answer your question? Make git automatically remove trailing whitespace before committing

[Zaz]

That explains the whitespace settings (+1 for that) but doesn't answer the question "How do I get rid of existing whitespace?". I've updated the original post for clarity.

[stevejpurves]

this is good for protecting against whitespace commits but the OP asked about removing whitespace they's already commited

[Zaz]

@stevejpurves: The top line explains how to remove trailing whitespace using sed. As far as I know, there is no git command that does the same thing.

[Kanhaiya]

TL;DR: To fix-up the last commit in terms of whitespace, use git rebase --whitespace=fix HEAD~