man > GIT-STRIPSPACE(1)

GIT-STRIPSPACE(1)                            Git Manual                            GIT-STRIPSPACE(1)



NAME
       git-stripspace - Remove unnecessary whitespace

SYNOPSIS
       git stripspace [-s | --strip-comments]
       git stripspace [-c | --comment-lines]


DESCRIPTION
       Read text, such as commit messages, notes, tags and branch descriptions, from the standard
       input and clean it in the manner used by Git.

       With no arguments, this will:

       •   remove trailing whitespace from all lines

       •   collapse multiple consecutive empty lines into one empty line

       •   remove empty lines from the beginning and end of the input

       •   add a missing \n to the last line if necessary.

       In the case where the input consists entirely of whitespace characters, no output will be
       produced.

       NOTE: This is intended for cleaning metadata, prefer the --whitespace=fix mode of git-
       apply(1) for correcting whitespace of patches or files in the repository.

OPTIONS
       -s, --strip-comments
           Skip and remove all lines starting with comment character (default #).

       -c, --comment-lines
           Prepend comment character and blank to each line. Lines will automatically be terminated
           with a newline. On empty lines, only the comment character will be prepended.

EXAMPLES
       Given the following noisy input with $ indicating the end of a line:

           |A brief introduction   $
           |   $
           |$
           |A new paragraph$
           |# with a commented-out line    $
           |explaining lots of stuff.$
           |$
           |# An old paragraph, also commented-out. $
           |      $
           |The end.$
           |  $


       Use git stripspace with no arguments to obtain:

           |A brief introduction$
           |$
           |A new paragraph$
           |# with a commented-out line$
           |explaining lots of stuff.$
           |$
           |# An old paragraph, also commented-out.$
           |$
           |The end.$


       Use git stripspace --strip-comments to obtain:

           |A brief introduction$
           |$
           |A new paragraph$
           |explaining lots of stuff.$
           |$
           |The end.$


GIT
       Part of the git(1) suite



Git 2.34.1                                   02/26/2026                            GIT-STRIPSPACE(1)