GIT-STRIPSPACE(1) Git Manual GIT-STRIPSPACE(1)

# [NAME](#NAME)

git-stripspace - Remove unnecessary whitespace

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

```
git stripspace [-s | --strip-comments]
git stripspace [-c | --comment-lines]
```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

Read text, such as commit messages, notes, tags and branch descriptions, from the standard input and clean it in the manner used by Git.

With no arguments, this will:

• remove trailing whitespace from all lines

• collapse multiple consecutive empty lines into one empty line

• remove empty lines from the beginning and end of the input

• add a missing *\\n* to the last line if necessary.

In the case where the input consists entirely of whitespace characters, no output will be produced.

**NOTE**: This is intended for cleaning metadata. Prefer the **--whitespace=fix** mode of [**git-apply**(1)](/man/os/git/git-apply.1) for correcting whitespace of patches or files in the repository.

# [OPTIONS](#OPTIONS)

-s, --strip-comments

Skip and remove all lines starting with a comment character (**core.commentChar**, default #).

-c, --comment-lines

Prepend the comment character and a blank space to each line. Lines will automatically be terminated with a newline. On empty lines, only the comment character will be prepended.

# [EXAMPLES](#EXAMPLES)

Given the following noisy input with *$* indicating the end of a line:

```
|A brief introduction   $
|   $
|$
|A new paragraph$
|# with a commented-out line    $
|explaining lots of stuff.$
|$
|# An old paragraph, also commented-out. $
|      $
|The end.$
|  $
```

Use *git stripspace* with no arguments to obtain:

```
|A brief introduction$
|$
|A new paragraph$
|# with a commented-out line$
|explaining lots of stuff.$
|$
|# An old paragraph, also commented-out.$
|$
|The end.$
```

Use *git stripspace --strip-comments* to obtain:

```
|A brief introduction$
|$
|A new paragraph$
|explaining lots of stuff.$
|$
|The end.$
```

# [GIT](#GIT)

Part of the [**git**(1)](/man/os/git/git.1) suite

2026-06-29 Git 2.55.0

---

Document: git-stripspace(1) from git 2.55.0-r10 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/git/git.git