# Re: the war on trailing whitespace

1 messages from 2006-02-28 to 2006-02-28. Participants: linux@horizon.com.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/3484

## linux@horizon.com, 2006-02-28 01:07

Subject: Re: the war on trailing whitespace
Message-ID: <20060228010715.31275.qmail@science.horizon.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20060228010715.31275.qmail%40science.horizon.com

```
The only language I know of where the presence of whitespace on blank
lines matters is make(1).  Even there, it's subtle.  It's okay to have
(using "cat -e" syntax)

foo : bar$
	command$
$
	command$

But there's a difference between

foo : bar$
	$

which specifies an empty command and will therefore not use a default rule, and

foo : bar$
$

which does not specify any command and so will use a default rule if one exists.


(Of course, you can also get [ \t]\n inside an arbitrary binary file, too.)

```