Re: [Groff] End-of-line whitespace.

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ted,

> Using the 'vim' editor, I can easily strip trailing spaces from a file
> I am editing with the command
> 
>   :1,$s/ [ ]*$//

I'm not sure why the second space is a character class, but I do the
same thing with

    :%s/  *$

`%' is a shorthand for `1,$'.  And since I want to delete the matched
text, there's no need to specify a replacement.  I could match / *$ but
it seems more logical to insist on an least one space being present, as
you do.

> (which I could have done with that posting to the list, if I had been
> alert to the possible presence of trailing spaces).

If you've syntax highlighting turned on in vim then you can specify that
end of line spaces are an `error' and they'd be highlighted, e.g. with a
red background.  See `:he nroff.vim' for something similar, although I
don't agree with its advice to only have one space after end of sentance
punctuation.

Cheers,
Ralph.