Reputation: 12923

Vim delete blank lines

What command can I run to remove blank lines in Vim?

Upvotes: 802

Answers (14)

nearly_lunchtime

Reputation: 12923

Found it, it's:

g/^\s*$/d

Source: Power of g at vim wikia

Brief explanation of :g
:[range]g/pattern/cmd
This acts on the specified [range] (default whole file), by executing the Ex command cmd for each line matching pattern (an Ex command is one starting with a colon such as :d for delete). Before executing cmd, "." is set to the current line.

Upvotes: 230

SergioAraujo

Reputation: 11800

This function only remove two or more blank lines, put the lines below in your vimrc, then use \d to call function

fun! DelBlank()
   let _s=@/
   let l = line(".")
   let c = col(".")
   :g/^\n\{2,}/d
   let @/=_s
   call cursor(l, c)
endfun
map <special> <leader>d :keepjumps call DelBlank()<cr>

Upvotes: 5

akp

Reputation: 637

Press delete key in insert mode to remove blank lines.

Upvotes: 5

MisterW

Reputation: 41

If something has double linespaced your text then this command will remove the double spacing and merge pre-existing repeating blank lines into a single blank line. It uses a temporary delimiter of ^^^ at the start of a line so if this clashes with your content choose something else. Lines containing only whitespace are treated as blank.

%s/^\s*\n\n\+/^^^\r/g | g/^\s*$/d | %s/^^^^.*

Upvotes: 2

cn8341

Reputation: 129

:g/^\s*$/d
^ begin of a line
\s* at least 0 spaces and as many as possible (greedy)
$ end of a line

paste

:command -range=% DBL :<line1>,<line2>g/^\s*$/d

in your .vimrc,then restart your vim. if you use command :5,12DBL it will delete all blank lines between 5th row and 12th row. I think my answer is the best answer!

Upvotes: 4

Pokey

Reputation: 51

I tried a few of the answers on this page, but a lot of them didn't work for me. Maybe because I'm using Vim on Windows 7 (don't mock, just have pity on me :p)?

Here's the easiest one that I found that works on Vim in Windows 7:

:v/\S/d

Here's a longer answer on the Vim Wikia: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Remove_unwanted_empty_lines

Upvotes: 5

allenhwkim

Reputation: 27738

This works for me

:%s/^\s*$\n//gc

Upvotes: 13

user1481441

Reputation: 11

This worked for me:

:%s/^[^a-zA-Z0-9]$\n//ig

It basically deletes all the lines that don't have a number or letter. Since all the items in my list had letters, it deleted all the blank lines.

Upvotes: 1

gauge00

Reputation: 161

how to remove all the blanks lines
```
:%s,\n\n,^M,g
```
(do this multiple times util all the empty lines went gone)
how to remove all the blanks lines leaving SINGLE empty line
```
:%s,\n\n\n,^M^M,g
```
(do this multiple times)
how to remove all the blanks lines leaving TWO empty lines AT MAXIMUM,
```
:%s,\n\n\n\n,^M^M^M,g
```
(do this multiple times)