How to prevent double final newlines in .chezmoitemplates results

[bradenhilton]

Many formatters enforce or optionally allow adding a final newline to files.

If you use one of these formatters on a file in your .chezmoitemplates directory e.g.:

(\n used as a visualization only, not included in the actual file contents)

.chezmoitemplates/file:

Hello world
\n

and then execute that template inside another template e.g.:

file.tmpl

{{ template "file" . }}
\n

the resulting file will contain two final newlines:

Hello world
\n
\n

If you use the template whitespace control characters in your .tmpl file e.g.:

{{ template "file" . -}}
\n

the resulting file will have no final newlines:

Hello world

Previously, I was working around this by manually removing the final newline from the .chezmoitemplates file, which is every bit as tedious as you might think.

If you would like the result to have only a single newline (for clean diffs etc.), you can edit your .tmpl file to use includeTemplate in combination with trim, and remove the whitespace control characters:

{{ includeTemplate "file" . | trim }}
\n

Hello world
\n

[vbrand1984]

Just add a template comment at the end of the template file:

{{- /* This deletes an empty string after the template */ -}}