Trim trailing spaces in Xcode

Question

Is there a way to force Xcode to trim trailing whitespaces when I save file?

I'm using version 3.1.3 if that matters.

Solution 1

You can create a script and bind it to a keyboard shortcut:

• Select Scripts Menu > Edit User Scripts...
• Press the + button and select New Shell Script
• Give it a name like "Strip Trailing Spaces", and give it a shortcut like ⌃⇧R.
• Set Input to "Selection" and Output to "Replace Selection"

Then enter the following script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

while (<>) {
    s/\s+$//;
    print "$_\n";
}

Solution 2

Starting from Xcode 4.4 whitespaces will be trimmed automatically by default, unless the line is all whitespace. You can also activate Including whitespace-only lines to fix this, which is not active by default.

Go to Xcode > Preferences > Text Editing > While editing

Solution 3

I'm using the Google Toolbox For Mac Xcode Plugin, it adds a "Correct whitespace on save" parameter that trim trailing whitespace on save. I missed that a lot from emacs.

Solution 4

I find using the new Automatically trim trailing whitespace -> Including whitespace-only lines as suggested by @MartinStolz works well while editing but I sometimes need to do Cmd + a -> Ctrl + i and save the file multiple times with the file in focus when I'm not editing.

In case you want to clean a whole project (excluding .md files) without using scripts, you can also do a Find & Replace -> Regular Expression. Since this technique removes trailing space and tabs for documentation/comments as well, you can also try a negative lookahead for blacklisted characters to filter out single-line comments.

Find all trailing whitespace:

[\t ]+$

Find trailing whitespace without touching single-line comments:

^(?!.*\\\\)[\t ]+$

Replace:

<nothing>

So linting can also be done without swiftlint autocorrect or similar third party solutions.

Solution 5

For Xcode 8, I installed the swimat Xcode plug-in, for formatting Swift code, which removed all trailing spaces and whitespace-only lines.

Installation Methods

1. Install via homebrew-cask:

   brew cask install swimat
   

2. Download the App directly:
   https://github.com/Jintin/Swimat/releases/download/v1.3.5/Swimat.zip

3. Clone extension branch and archive to Mac App.

Usage

Once installed, you can run Swimat in Xcode via Editor -> Swimat -> Format.

View more solutions

Comments

[Alexander Gladysh]

Ah, yes, so simple... Thanks. Is there any way to associate this with file save?

[Nikolai Ruhe]

Edited to answer why workarounds are unsatisfying in this case

[Alexander Gladysh]

Thanks. While I'm in favor of doing it in the proper way, I'd settle for about any not-too-intrusive hack. Those extra whitespaces are really annoying.

[Andy]

I'm using this plugin as well. It does what it says.

[deepwell]

Would be perfect, unfortunately it does not work on Xcode 4 at the moment :(

[dmaclach]

We now have some basic Xcode 4 support. See our new plugin

[jhasse]

Where can I find the "Correct whitespace on save" parameter?

[Kristofer Sommestad]

I finally managed to get GTM working on Xcode 4.3.2, but the installation instructions from the GTM wiki seemed to be invalid. Instead of placing the .xcplugin in ~/Library/Application Support/Developer/Shared/Xcode/Plug-ins (as per Google's instructions) I had to put it in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/PlugIns and restart Xcode.

[Desmond Hume]

@KristoferSommestad Followed your instructions for the same Xcode version (build 4E2002), but couldn't find "Correct whitespace on save" anywhere in the preferences despite of the fact that "About GTM Xcode Plugin" does appear under "Xcode" in the main menu..

[Kristofer Sommestad]

No, me neither Desmond. But there's an option to strip all ws in the Edit menu, iirc. And a short command for it too.

[Maxime]

@DesmondHume unfortunately the "Correct whitespace on save" preference is only available in GTMXcodePlugin for XCode 3.x. Since XCode 4, I'm using a custom script (called by my Makefile) to remove trailing whitespaces

[Michael Baltaks]

I installed the plugin as per the instructions on the GTM site, and it worked as soon as I restarted Xcode, using Xcode 4.3.3 on Mac OS X 10.7.

[SMBiggs]

To work on an entire file (which is probably what you would want to do), set Input to "Entire Document" and Output to "Replace Document Contents." However, this leaves the cursor at the bottom of the file.

[Basil Bourque]

This answer is obsolete as of Xcode 4.4. See the answer by Martin Stolz.

[ma11hew28]

This setting only trims a line's trailing whitespace after the cursor has left that line. So, it still allows you to save a file with one line of trailing whitespace, if the cursor is on that line upon save.

[friederbluemle]

Why on earth is this not the default? If you have an existing file with trailing whitespace, just mark all, cut, save, paste, save.

[Urda]

This needs to override the hacky script solution on this answer.

[Alexis C.]

Using this + ctrl-i on all existing files takes care of trailing whitespaces

[Sabrina]

this tool dont remove blank lines.

[Blastfurnace]

Does this only remove trailing spaces as requested in the question?

[Pranav Kasetti]

Right idea @H2zee, just need to use RegEx instead (check out my answer above).

[IlyaEremin]

@Sabrina this answer is about removing trailing spaces, not blank lines.

[h2zee]

@Blastfurnace it depends on you, whatever you want to change, you can. let me know if you have any problem

[internetdotcom]

The feature is still listed in 13.3 but it does not work, or at least does not work reliably. It's common to find trailing whitespace throughout files after editing.