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How can I remove leading whitespace in all lines in a file using vi?

Last updated: 07/03/2009

Sometimes, when pasting copy into vi, it adds lots of tabs or spaces at the beginning of each line. This makes things unreadable, and takes a long time to remove by hand.

This command will remove all leading "junk" from your HTML files. NOTE: Do not try this on any php or asp, or non-html file, as it will certainly trash the file.

In vi, run this command:

:%s/^\s\s*//g

This will remove all leading characters up to the first < in the line. Again, if you have embedded code in your file, do not use this - this is

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How can I remove leading whitespace in all lines in a file using vi?