Common Indent Margin Remover
Remove the common literal spaces/tabs margin of nonblank lines; tabs are not expanded and original separators are retained.
Description
Remove the common literal spaces/tabs margin of nonblank lines; tabs are not expanded and original separators are retained.
Removing a common indentation margin can prepare a pasted block for reuse while preserving its internal relative indentation. Literal-prefix comparison keeps tabs distinct from spaces.
When to use this tool
Remove the common literal spaces/tabs margin of nonblank lines; tabs are not expanded and original separators are retained.
- Prepare the supplied text fields for this operation.
- Compare the complete example with the representation used by your own input before carrying the result into another step.
How to use the tool and how it works
- Enter text. Use the exact text syntax, units and index conventions explained below.
- Run the tool. If input validation fails, correct the supplied fields before interpreting any result.
- Read result.removedMargin, result.text. Interpret false, null and empty lists using the distinctions below; they can be valid outputs.
Ignore whitespace-only lines when finding the longest common leading space/tab prefix of nonblank lines. Remove that exact prefix from every line that begins with it, preserving original line endings, and return removedMargin.1
| Input field | Meaning and representation | Accepted input |
|---|---|---|
| text | text. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| Output field | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| result | Object containing the named outputs below. |
| result.removedMargin | The removed margin value under the stated formula or text convention. |
| result.text | The text value under the stated formula or text convention. |
{
"input": {
"text": " a\n b"
},
"output": {
"result": {
"removedMargin": " ",
"text": "a\nb"
}
}
}Limitations and assumptions
- This uses character prefixes, not equivalent rendered widths. Blank lines lose the margin only when they contain that exact prefix; an allblank block has an empty common margin.
- Text offsets and lengths use UTF-16 code units unless explicitly described as bytes or code points. CRLF, CR and LF are recognized as line endings; a terminal newline creates a final empty line in the shared line model.
- Every declared top-level field is required and unexpected fields are rejected. Numeric inputs must be finite; ordinary text fields are bounded to 8,192 UTF-16 code units, with tighter operation-specific limits where stated.
- Ordinary string lists have at most 128 entries of at most 128 code units each; numeric lists and matrices have separate bounded size checks. Nonfinite results and excessively large serialized outputs are rejected.
- Indexes are zero-based and spans have an exclusive end unless explicitly stated otherwise. A valid false, null or empty-list result is distinct from malformed input.
Alternative or Complementary methods
Use a parser or language-aware editor when quoting, syntax or nested constructs matter. For plain text transforms, keep UTF-16 offsets, Unicode code points, grapheme clusters and UTF-8 byte offsets distinct; apply changes to the same source version used to calculate spans.
References
Similar or alternative tools
- longest common prefix
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