Sublime Text 2: How to delete blank/empty lines

Question

Let's say I had a text file with the following nine lines:

foo

bar

baz

qux

quux

How can I use Sublime Text 2 to remove all four of the blank/empty lines, leaving only five lines?

score 738 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 19 '23 at 23:24

738

Select the text

Press:

Ctrl + H on PC, or
command + option + F on Mac or
Click Find->Replace.

Make sure you have selected 'regular expression' by pressing:

Alt + R on PC or
command + option + R on Mac or
Click .* in the Find box.

Find what: ^\n or ^(\r|\n\r?)

Replace With: (nothing, leave in blank).

edited Jun 19 '23 at 23:24

Community

1
1

answered Aug 17 '12 at 16:22

Hugo Corrá

14,546
3
27
39

3

That works, thank you! Is there a way to bind that find/replace to a keyboard shortcut or somehow save it for quick access? I googled it and couldn't find anything – Nick Aug 17 '12 at 16:43
49

Small suggestion use `^(\r|\n\r?)` to cover all possible line breaks. – Haris Krajina Nov 07 '12 at 09:22
5

For me (Sublime Text 2) shortcut is (Alt + Cmd + F) then as describe by Hugp Corra – Maxence Jul 03 '13 at 14:41
On OS X, regex is enabled with Command-Alt-R (while the Find window is open) – Jedidja Feb 03 '14 at 15:50
28

A better way to find all empty lines (including ones with whitespace) would be: `^[\s]*?[\n\r]+` – Crates Aug 29 '14 at 16:47
5

@Crates you don't need the `?`, as a `*` also matches zero occurences and `\s*` will match the extra '\r' when for example editing windows text in a linux environment, so `^\s*$` does the trick. – drevicko Nov 01 '14 at 09:41
And small last step: press Ctrl + Alt + Enter to replace them all – avj Aug 26 '15 at 10:53
Also you can do it on multiple files and folder also. visit this link http://docs.sublimetext.info/en/latest/search_and_replace/search_and_replace_files.html – cijagani Dec 27 '15 at 07:33
This continues to work properly in Sublime Text 3. :-) – Corey S. Jun 13 '18 at 13:52

score 72 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 15 '13 at 10:58

72

The regexp in Hugo's answer is correct when there is no spaces in the line. In case if there are space regexp can be ^\s+$

answered Feb 15 '13 at 10:58

signalpillar

916
7
3

38

That assumes that there IS whitespace. Also, it won't work for actually substituting the lines with nothing. Try `^[\s]*?[\n\r]+` instead. I've tested that, and it works. – Crates Aug 29 '14 at 16:49
Crates's solution should be the best answer. However, `^[\s]*[\n\r]+` should be enough. – emeraldhieu Mar 06 '23 at 05:08

score 25 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 12 '13 at 08:43

There are also some ST2/ST3 Plugins for such tasks. I do like these two:

Delete Blank Lines (also available via Package Control)
Trailing Spaces (also available via Package Control)

The first one has two methods for removing empty/unnecessary lines. One of them called Delete Surplus Blank Lines which is cool. It removes only those lines that are followed by another empty line

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 12 '15 at 10:15

12

Don't even know how this whole thing works, but I tried ^\s*$ and didn't work (leaving still some empty lines).

This instead ^\s* works for me

{sublime text 3}

answered Sep 12 '15 at 10:15

abs

129
1
2

score 10 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 21 '15 at 09:54

10

A Find/Replace solution:

Regex Find:\s+

Replace with: //single space

answered Jan 21 '15 at 09:54

UserBSS1

2,091
1
28
31

3

Actually, this : $\s+ – kris Oct 20 '15 at 00:58

score 8 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 27 '19 at 18:29

8

Their is a more easily way to do that without regex. you have just to select the whole text. then go to: Edit--> Permute Lines --> Unique.

That's all. and all blank lines will be deleted.

answered Mar 27 '19 at 18:29

Dihia LANASRI

133
2
6

2

This will delete ALL non-unique lines. Not just blanks. So, say you have HTML with a lot of lines being a single closing , it will delete them all except the first. Or in code, it will delete all your closing }. This is not reliable to delete just blank lines, understand what it does. – Ivan McA Jan 08 '20 at 12:25
This may not exact match the origin question, but this is the only native and easiest solution when a) You're sure there are no other duplicated lines. b) You're not fan of regexp. – Dai Mar 09 '22 at 01:39
Also this leaves one empty line always, as it is always unique within dataset – Suncatcher Jul 12 '22 at 12:34

score 7 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 13 '13 at 00:03

7

I had to use:

replace \n^\s*\n with \n

The https://github.com/NicholasBuse/sublime_DeleteBlankLines plugin did nothing at all.

answered Nov 13 '13 at 00:03

Bruce Edge

1,975
1
23
31

2

Make sure you select the area you want it to effect and then use the respective shortcut keys **Windows**: _Ctrl+Alt+Backspace_ (Delete Blank Lines) _Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Backspace_ (Delete Surplus Blank Lines) **OSX**: _Ctrl+Alt+Delete_ (Delete Blank Lines) _Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Delete_ (Delete Blank Lines) **Linux**: _Ctrl+Alt+Backspace_ (Delete Blank Lines) _Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Backspace_ (Delete Surplus Blank Lines) – Xtremefaith Oct 23 '14 at 19:13

score 6 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:29

6

Simpler than I thought. Ctrl + A Followed by Ctrl + H Then Select Regular Expression .* . Replace \n\n with \n. Voila!

edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:29

Misha Akopov

12,241
27
68
82

answered Oct 29 '15 at 07:46

Samuel Wahome

61
1
1

score 6 · Answer 9 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

6

Sublime Text 2 & 3

The Comments of @crates work for me,

Step 1: Simply press on ctrl+H

Step 2: press on RegEX key

Step 3: write this in the Find: ^[\s]*?[\n\r]+

Step 4: replace all

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Oct 16 '17 at 22:40

rsc05

3,626
2
36
57

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 15 '14 at 14:43

4

You are looking for this:

^\n|^\s+$

it will not delete the line, if there is content with white space or tabs in front>

e.g.:

these will not be deleted: ...space... abc

...tab... abc

this will:

...space... ...nothing else...

...tab... ...nothing else...

answered Aug 15 '14 at 14:43

Brian Joseph Spinos

2,144
2
18
18

score 3 · Answer 11 · edited Sep 01 '14 at 14:48

3

Using multiple selections: select one pair of line breaks, then use Quick Find All (Alt+F3), or Quick Add Next (Ctrl+D) repeatedly, to select them all; then hit Enter to replace them with single line breaks.

edited Sep 01 '14 at 14:48

Volker E.

5,911
11
47
64

answered Oct 25 '13 at 16:53

deltab

2,498
23
28

1

In large documents, I find this crashes Sublime. – Thalecress Oct 31 '13 at 19:39

score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jan 13 '18 at 09:47

2

There is a wonderful package (for Sublime 2 & 3) called 'Trimmer' which deletes empty lines. It also does many other useful things.

Refer this: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Trimmer

answered Jan 13 '18 at 09:47

Yogesh Mistry

2,082
15
19

is there any analog for sublime 4? – Suncatcher Jul 12 '22 at 12:40

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 16 '18 at 04:40

2

Another way, you can use the command line cc.dbl of ConyEdit (a plugin) to delete blank lines or empty lines.

answered Jul 16 '18 at 04:40

Dick

49
3

Donncha · Answer 14 · 2015-02-17T15:38:32.123

1

There's also "Join lines". If on OSX, select all your text, and press CMD-J a few times, and it will collapse your selection by line, removing the line breaks.

Edit: This approach will leave you with everything on one line, which is not what you asked for.

edited Feb 17 '15 at 15:38

answered Apr 10 '14 at 12:58

Donncha

64
1
7

2

i see where you're going with this though.. this suggestion results in dragging all content into one line, but a macro would make this work: (OSX keys) `ctrl-q` (record macro), `cmd-j` (join lines), `down arrow`, `ctrl-q` (end macro). Then `shift-ctrl-q` to repeat as often as required... – ptim Feb 13 '15 at 10:00

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 19:40

1

For those who are curious of sublime text editor, the unofficial-documentation may be interesting!

answered Mar 05 '15 at 19:40

herve

3,825
2
18
27

score 1 · Answer 16 · edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:29

1

To find extra spaces and blank lines press Ctrl+Shift+F Select Regular Expressions Find

[\n\r]{2,}

and then replace with

\n

to remove all kind of spaces in sublime and dreamviewr

edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:29

Misha Akopov

12,241
27
68
82

answered Dec 20 '19 at 08:24

Naeem Ijaz

805
9
17

score 0 · Answer 17 · edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:27

0

Using find / replace, try pasting a selection starting at the end of the line above the blank line and ends at the beginning of the line after the blank. This works for a single blank line. You can repeat the process for multiple blank lines as well. CTRL-H, put your selection in the find box and put a single newline in the replace box via copy/paste or other method.

edited Jan 06 '20 at 15:27

Misha Akopov

12,241
27
68
82

answered May 12 '18 at 19:30

Clayton Loudon

1
1

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Sep 20 '18 at 15:29

0

In my case some empty lines contained the unicode character zero width space (U+200b). To rid empty lines, including the ones with this unicode character:

\s\x{200b}|^\s

answered Sep 20 '18 at 15:29

MetalGodwin

3,784
2
17
14

score -1 · Answer 19 · edited Apr 30 '17 at 06:12

-1

If ^\n does not work properly ===> try .*[^\w]\n

edited Apr 30 '17 at 06:12

McCygnus

4,187
6
34
30

answered Apr 29 '17 at 04:10

Marshall Z

21
3

Sublime Text 2: How to delete blank/empty lines

19 Answers19

Sublime Text 2 & 3

Linked