library

noindent

Wed Jun 02 2021
Remove indentation from multiline strings, e.g. ones that were created with template literals

Allows you to use multiline strings created with template literals that were constructed with indentation. noindent cleans out the indentation, making the resulting string clean from inconsistent indentations while still being easy to read on code.

Easy to use with trivial interface, creates no additional dependencies, includes typings and is tiny (616 bytes minified, 369 bytes gzipped).

Example

import noindent from 'noindent'

(() => {
  const result = noindent(`
    Example input
    
    Usually, this would result in a string
    that contains lots of unwanted whitespaces
    
      Which can lead to unwanted results if
      the strings are used by whitespace-sensitive
      code
      
    Or if the output is used as text where
    whitespace is visible. 
  `)
})()

produces result (whitespaces and line breaks that are preserved are displayed as symbols):

ExampleB7inputb
b
Usually,B7thisB7wouldB7resultB7inB7aB7stringb
thatB7containsB7lotsB7ofB7unwantedB7whitespacesb
b
B7B7WhichB7canB7leadB7toB7unwantedB7resultsB7ifb
B7B7theB7stringsB7areB7usedB7byB7whitespace-sensitiveb
B7B7codeb
b
OrB7ifB7theB7outputB7isB7usedB7asB7textB7whereb
whitespaceB7isB7visible. 

Note that further indentations, i.e. blocks of text that are further offset from the rest of the text, are preserved. Also, if the string is ended in a last line which only contains spaces, this line is omitted.

Installation

Install with yarn add noindent or npm i noindent --save, then import with import noindent from 'noindent' or const noindent = require('noindent').

Corner Cases

Various alternative syntax applications should work as well. The following code snippets all produce the output

Test1b
Test2b
B7B7Test3

Text starts in first line

import noindent from 'noindent'

(() => {
  const result = noindent(`Test1
    Test2
      Test3
  `)
})()

Text ends on last line with content

import noindent from 'noindent'

(() => {
  const result = noindent(`
    Test1
    Test2
      Test3`)
})()
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Lukas Bach
Software engineer at GoTo