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AutoHotkey: remove two or more extra blank lines which start with blank space

Hello experts,

The following procedure allows me to remove extra blank lines.

^!Space::
  ; clipboard:="" ; Joe commented out - not needed because Ctrl+c replaces Clipboard
  ;~ Send, ^a ; Luis commented out because he prefers to select the block
  Send, ^c
  ClipWait,1 ; Joe added - good practice to do a ClipWait after Ctrl+c
  If (ErrorLevel=1)
  {
    MsgBox,4144,Error,No text appeared on clipboard after waiting for one second
    Return
  }
  Clipboard:=RegExReplace(Clipboard,"\R\R\K\R+") ; replace two or more consecutive blank lines with a single blank line
  sleep 100
  ; Joe: see if last two chars are CR and/or LF
  LastChar:=SubStr(Clipboard,0,1)
  If ((LastChar="`r") or (LastChar="`n"))
    StringTrimRight,Clipboard,Clipboard,1
  If ((LastChar="`r") or (LastChar="`n"))
    StringTrimRight,Clipboard,Clipboard,1
  
  Send, ^v
  Return

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I noticed that removal is not performed when blank lines starts with a space.

Example of block text:

text

text with extra blank lines above.

Could you please help me to adjust the AutoHotkey to be able to remove extra blank lines even if they start with a space?

Thank you for your help.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Joe Winograd

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Luis Diaz

ASKER

Thank you very much for this proposal Joe.
Unfortunately I tested here with Notepad++ in W10 and it doesn't work.
I made sure to test it in a single AutoHotkey file.
I send you attach the file used in my test.
remove-empty-lines.txt

Joe Winograd

Works perfectly here, but keep in mind that it retains one of the blank lines in a sequence of multiple blank lines...and the blank line that it retains may or may not be one with spaces and/or tabs. Anyway, attached is a short video showing the AutoHotkey script as posted above working fine on the text file that you posted...but, as noted above, the one blank line that it retains is one with a space at the beginning. Regards, Joe
luis-remove-extra-blank-lines.mp4

Luis Diaz

ASKER

Joe,

It works indeed. I was confused as in the previous script it finish with a ctrl + v. Now I understand that it keep in the clipboard.
Sorry for that.

Thank you for your help.

SOLUTION

Joe Winograd

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Luis Diaz

ASKER

Thank you very much Joe.

Joe Winograd

As always, Luis, a pleasure to help you. Regards, Joe