A common operation when converting files, or just cleaning up files, is to remove trailing spaces. (Trailing spaces are “extra” spaces past the ends of lines.) Trailing spaces can come from several sources:
- Users often inadvertently add extra spaces to the ends of lines while editing.
- Some programs, e.g. word processors, add an extra space to each line within a paragraph.
- The function EDIT > > Convert > All lines same length adds trailing spaces to make all lines the same length.
- Files exported from databases often have trailing spaces, perhaps corresponding to unused fields.