Remove newline at end of text file

Sometimes when I’m working with files in Git, I find myself with a change in a file that says something like

-}
\ No newline at end of file
+}

This happens because the file had no newline at the end of the file but when I modify the file in my text editor the newline is added on save.

Why You Should Have a Newline at the End of the File

Officially, the Posix standard defines a line as

A sequence of zero or more non- <newline> characters plus a terminating <newline> character.

How to Remove the Newline at the End of the File

Even though the newline should appear at the end of the file, sometimes I’ll opt to remove it to minimize the “noise” in a commit. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is with

perl -pi -e 'chomp if eof' <myfile>

e.g.

perl -pi -e 'chomp if eof' composer.json

Alias

You can create an alias called chompeof by adding the following to your shell startup file (e.g. ~/.zshrc).

alias chompeof="perl -pi -e 'chomp if eof'"

See my Pull Request Add alias to remove newline at end of file to add this to my Zsh configuration.

Now I can use

chompeof composer.json

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a senior backend engineer.