Question

I often want to make a multiline function call and reduce it down to one line. For example, convert…

function_call(      'first_arg',      'second') 

to

function_call('first_arg', 'second') 

Does emacs have some commands to help with this. Specifically, is there a command that will delete all whitespace from the point to the first non-whitespace character?

Answer 1

You might try delete-indentation, my favorite command for joining multiple lines into one line. In your example, put the cursor on the line with ‘second’ and hit M-^ twice. Here are the docs:

M-^ runs the command delete-indentation, which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in simple.el.

It is bound to M-^.

(delete-indentation &optional arg)

Join this line to previous and fix up whitespace at join. If there is a fill prefix, delete it from the beginning of this line. With argument, join this line to following line.