Whitespace Cleaner
Normalize spaces and tabs, trim line edges and manage blank lines
Paste text and clean up spaces or blank lines first; finer whitespace rules are available in Advanced mode.
The full guide also includes pitfalls, worked examples, snippets, FAQs, and related tools for checking results or troubleshooting.
About this tool
Clean text with four independent choices: normalize ASCII spaces and tabs to one space, trim whitespace from each lineβs edges, remove whitespace-only lines, or collapse consecutive whitespace-only lines to one. CRLF and lone CR line endings always become LF. Internal nonbreaking spaces and fullwidth spaces are not collapsed by the ASCII space/tab option, although line-edge trimming and blank-line detection recognize them. Removing all content can legitimately produce an empty result. These operations do not understand Markdown, source-code indentation or tab-separated columns, so apply only the rules your data allows. Processing stays local and raw input drafts are not saved.
Production Snippets
Worked example
text
input: a\tb\n \nc
output: a b\ncFailure Clinic (Common Pitfalls)
Column and code boundaries can be whitespace
Cause: Replacing tabs with spaces changes TSV columns and can change code meaning.
Fix: Turn off normalization and line trimming for structured text unless those edits are intended.
Scenario Recipes
Remove a whitespace-only line
Goal: Verify that blank-line removal is independent of trimming.
- Paste a, a tab, b, then a line containing three spaces, then c.
- Enable space/tab normalization and Remove empty lines; disable line trimming.
Result: The result has two lines: a b and c.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the space option replace a single tab?
Yes. Each run of ASCII spaces or tabs, including one tab, becomes one ordinary space. Other internal Unicode whitespace is unchanged.
Does removing blank lines require line trimming?
No. Lines containing only whitespace are removed independently of the trim option. Collapsing blank lines uses the same definition and keeps the first blank line in each run.
How can I preserve paragraph spacing?
Disable both Remove empty lines and Collapse multi blank lines. Disable trimming and space normalization too when indentation or line-end spaces matter. Line endings still become LF.
Can I clean code, Markdown or TSV safely with all options?
Not generally. Tabs can separate columns, leading spaces can define code blocks, and two trailing spaces can mean a Markdown hard break. Review these structures or keep their whitespace rules disabled.
Why is the result empty?
Whitespace-only input can become empty when trimming or line removal removes all its content. The empty-result label indicates a completed conversion, not an error.
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