Whitespace and Line Cleaner cleanup

What this tool does

Copied text arrives with whitespace you did not ask for. Copying from a PDF leaves indentation on every line, copying from a web page brings a stack of blank lines, and moving text between editors mixes tabs with spaces. None of it is ready to use as code or data.

This tool applies the cleanups you tick: trimming each line, collapsing runs of spaces into one, dropping blank lines, reducing consecutive blank lines to a single one, converting tabs to spaces, and joining every line into one.

Options apply in sequence, so combinations produce different results. The character count before and after is displayed so you can see exactly how much was removed.

When to use it

Use it to tidy text copied from a PDF or web page, to strip stray whitespace from a data file, to join a wrapped paragraph into one line, or to reset the indentation of a code snippet.

Input and output examples

Notes and limitations

Do not use it on data where whitespace carries meaning. Python indentation is part of the syntax, YAML behaves the same way, and Markdown code blocks and tables depend on spacing; trimming line starts destroys all of them. Joining lines cannot be undone, so keep the original. Note too that while ordinary spaces and tabs are handled, special whitespace such as a non-breaking space copied from a web page can survive invisibly. If you suspect one, inspect the string with a character analysis tool.

Frequently asked questions