How do you remove trailing spaces in all files except Markdown?

Question

In Visual Studio Code the setting

"files.trimTrailingWhitespace": true

removes trailing white space when files are saved, or Shift + Alt + F is used to format a file, but this breaks Markdown formatting.

How do you selectively turn off white space trimming for Markdown?

score 43 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 20 '18 at 16:31

43

Add this line to your settings.json file.

"[markdown]": {
    "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": false
}

answered Aug 20 '18 at 16:31

GollyJer

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How can I additionally turn it off for `text (.txt)` and `csv` files? – Superdooperhero Dec 28 '19 at 18:07
1

`ctl-k m` to bring up the language mode selector. That is the list of language specific settings you can apply. For text it looks like `[plaintext]`. [This could be helpful to set csv files to behave like plain text files](https://stackoverflow.com/a/36789145/25197). – GollyJer Dec 30 '19 at 20:04
Thanks! CSV does not seem to be in the list though. – Superdooperhero Dec 30 '19 at 20:12
1

Yeah. Use the link provided in my last comment to make csv format like text. – GollyJer Dec 30 '19 at 21:02
1

This is a godsend ❤️ – Riveascore Jul 10 '23 at 18:20

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 23 '20 at 23:19

3

You can use EditorConfig by adding .editorconfig at the root of your project:

[!markdown]
trim_trailing_whitespace: false

Or as GollyJer suggested, add this code snippet in the settings.json file:

"[markdown]": {
    "files.trimTrailingWhitespace": false
}

edited Aug 23 '20 at 23:19

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 21 '18 at 12:05

Yashu Mittal

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that does not look like the right .editorconfig syntax. `[*.md] trim_trailing_whitespace=false` – Chris Guzak Jan 05 '19 at 18:01

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 06 '22 at 07:09

You can now (VSCode 1.68, May 2022) do this through the Settings GUI instead of directly your settings.json.

Settings editor improvements

The Settings editor now shows a default value override indicator for language-specific settings.

As a note, one can view language-specific settings by adding a language filter in the Settings editor search bar, and one can add such a filter either by typing it out explicitly, or by clicking the filter button on the right of the search bar, and selecting the "Language" option.

When the default value override indicator shows up, it indicates that the default value of the language-specific setting has been overridden by an extension. The indicator also indicates which extension overrode the default value.

^{(Theme Light Pink)}

This example above is for line wrapping, but you can adapt it to reference trim_trailing_whitespace.

Nice! VSCode just keeps getting better. – GollyJer Jun 06 '22 at 17:03 — GollyJer, Jun 06 '22 at 17:03

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 26 '20 at 20:27

1

Do Ctrl-K s. This will "Save without formatting", which also means, without trimming trailing whitespace in the file you're editing

answered Dec 26 '20 at 20:27

kolypto

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This is really only a temporary workaround, not an answer. – connexo Jul 01 '21 at 09:03

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 06 '22 at 16:15

Solution

Add or update .editorconfig in root of your project and add the 2 following lines to prevent trimming on whitespace in VScode on matching file extension's

Update .editorconfig with following

[*.md]
trim_trailing_whitespace = false

[*.mdx]
trim_trailing_whitespace = false

How do you remove trailing spaces in all files except Markdown?

5 Answers5

Settings editor improvements

Solution

Update .editorconfig with following