PHPStorm reformat - how do I disable removing spaces in empty lines?

Question

When reformatting a file, phpstorm replaces empty lines with whitespace to just empty lines, e.g. ^[tab][tab]$ to ^$. How do I disable this?

Barri

Why do you care about spaces on empty lines? – Broomstick

Because some developers use IDEs which place tabs in empty lines, so reformat will remove these every time and add a lot of useless info to git diffs. – Barri

diff has an option to ignore whitespace differences. Doesn't git diff allow you to use that option? – Broomstick

Github doesn't seem to have that option I guess? Actually, I don't care if there are or are not spaces in empty lines, so I'd want phpstorm to act accordingly. – Barri

because, we can't always specify "ignore white spaces" on a git add/commit based on tools, and suddenly a 1-3 line correction submitted for review indicates half the file was changed! – Candra

Answer 1

You cannot -- http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-73161

I was thinking that disabling stripping whitespace characters altogether would do the job:

By changing Settings | Editor | Strip trailing spaces on Save (which nowadays has Modified Lines option)

but apparently it only works on "Save".

Related tickets:

• http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-99173

---

Now you can do that on code reformat as well:

1. Settings/Preferences
2. Editor | Code Style
3. $language$ | Tabs and Indents | Keep indents on empty lines check box

(this option was introduced after this answer was provided: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-103941#comment=27-807213)

Disproportion

I've set "strip trailing spaces on Save" to "None". But reformat still acts as I've described originally. Is this expected? – Barri

"Yes" and "No" at the same time. "Yes" because right now it cannot be avoided (for whatever reason -- see above mentioned ticket IDEA-73161) and "No" because I would expect that the above option to work even during reformat. I will alter my answer a bit. – Disproportion

Is it possible to disable striping spaces on .blade.php files, but enable it for all other files (including index.php etc.) ? – Aldos

@Aldos Using .editorconfig file (it has standard option fir such stuff) & enabled EditorConfig support in IDE settings -- yes, that should work fine (even on per file level, if configured properly). NOTE: When enabled, settings from .editorconfig override IDE settings. – Disproportion

Answer 2

I find solution in opposite topic: Configure editor to remove whitespaces in blank lines.

It works in WebStorm, and should work in PHPStorm as well:

Settings | Editor | Code Style | PHP | Tabs and Indents (tab) | Keep Indents on Empty Lines" (check box)

Laryngotomy