How do you stop visual studio 2012 trimming white space at the end of each line

Question

User-2087996274 posted
this is really giving me headaches, ever since I installed the last update visual studio2012 keeps removing white space at the end of each line when I save a file.

I'm working on a team project where code changes are reviewed that gives reviewers hard time for so many changes made turn out to be white space

I can't find any setting that turns this feature off, there're some posts online mentioning about injecting a piece of macro in the IDE to stop this from happening. Seriously? if this is true, I can't believe Microsoft delivers such a bad feature that there's no easy way to turn it off..

Can anyone help me out please?
please note it's Visual studio 2012

Answer 1

User1508394307 posted

It could be due to formatting feature (Format Selection or Format Document from the Edit menu). A formatting will remove a space after ; (in my case it's a .cs file). By default it also run automatically

• on ; 
• on }
• on paste

and can be changed in Tools - Options - Text Editor - C# - Formatting - General

It does not change anything on Save. At least I tried it and for me it does not change anything.

Answer 2

User-2087996274 posted

^thanks for the reply

but it's a diffrent issue, I do need those formatting features such as formatting on ;

the exact issue that Im experiencing is when I save a file, it reformats the entire file by removing trialing white space of each line, I happened to work on a file that contained roughly 800 lines of code, and I only made a few small changes on one of the functions, yet after saving the file, it showed more than a half of the file was changed. it gives the reviewer a bad time altho indeed he can add w=-1 in github url to eliminate white space but it's not an ideal solution because I am the only "lucky" guy who installed the darn update, it makes me look bad to be the only guy who requires special care. I can't blame my team lead gets annoyed because this becomes an chronic issue.

now I'm just hoping I missed the easy setting somewhere in vs2012 that can turn off this feature

Answer 3

User1508394307 posted

I understand it and as I mentioned above it does not change anything for me on Save.

One thing just came to my mind is that there is an option at

Environment->Documents->Check for consistent line endings on load

that checks if file was edited on different operating systems (or previously saved with different settings for line endings). Usually I think it alerts about it when opening such file. 

Check if you have that option selected and try to unselect it and open-save again to see if it does change anything.

Answer 4

User-2087996274 posted

yea, I tried that, didn't make any difference. 

Answer 5

User-1454326058 posted

Hi walterh,

I can’t reproduce that scene.

Do you install any plug-in or tools for VS? If so, I suggest that you should to check whether the issue is cause by them.

On the other hand, I suggest that you could reset the setting. (Tools=>Import and Export Settings Wizard=>Reset all settings)

If it still have the issue, I suggest that you could repair your VS and check the result.

Thanks

Best Regards

Answer 6

User2053451246 posted

Do you have Productivity Power Tools installed?  Check Tools -> Options -> Productivity Power Tools -> PowerCommands: General.  I believe the option Format document on save would cause this.