Dedent

A Go package to remove shared indentation from a multiline string.

In Go, raw string literals preserve every character from the source, including leading whitespace. When a multiline string is indented to align with surrounding code, that indentation becomes part of the value. This package identifies the shared indentation across lines and removes it.

Requirements

• Go 1.24 or later.

Installation

Install the latest version of the package by running the following command:

go get github.com/humtta/dedent@latest

Usage

This package provides only two functions:

• D accepts a string and returns a new one with the shared indentation removed from each line.
• Df formats the given string with fmt.Sprintf and passes the result to D.

Here's an example:

package main

import (
  "fmt"

  "github.com/humtta/dedent"
)

func main() {
  html := `
    <div>
      <h1>Hello, %s!</h1>
    </div>
  `

  fmt.Print(dedent.D(html))
  // Output:
  // <div>
  //   <h1>Hello, %s!</h1>
  // </div>

  fmt.Print(dedent.Df(html, "World"))
  // Output:
  // <div>
  //   <h1>Hello, World!</h1>
  // </div>
}

Behavior

The package applies the following rules when processing a multiline string:

• Removes the first line if it's empty or blank.
• Removes the longest indentation shared by all non-blank lines.
• Removes all whitespace from blank lines.
• Does not remove trailing whitespace from non-blank lines.
• Does not remove empty lines.
• Does not treat spaces and tabs as equivalent characters. Shared indentation evaluation requires byte-for-byte equivalence.
• Supports only LF line endings.

Documentation

The full API reference is available on Go Packages.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.