How to fix (and find) many git-* --check errors?

We have > 37000 white space "errors" in HEAD, mostly trailing whitespace, and I'm looking for a

$ git diff --check | git??? --whitespace=fix

command.

Is there such a beast?

I see that git-apply has a --whitespace=<action> option, but I don't seem to grock how to be able to use it for fixing my working directory.

Details follow:

I can create a perl script that does this for me (e.g. inspired by 1.5.6's hooks/pre-commit's perl version of git diff --check) and post it here if anybody would like it, but I'd rather use some well-tested method if one exists. And it seems git-apply has the functionality somehow.

Of course, I can also:

$ git diff --check > tmpcfile # (Or some other command to find all of them under ./) $ vim :cfile tmpcfile

Thank you for --check having a handy output format, BTW! But I prefer automation (and automated auditing of the results) for 37000 lines.

Also the way I found them is like this:

$ git diff --check $(git log --pretty=format:%H | tail -1)..HEAD .

(The diff between "the empty commit" and HEAD - well between the first commit and HEAD anyway. Is there a ref for "totally empty" or the revision before the first commit? Or a more elegant way to get this list?)

Peter