White space issue in markdown

Should a text file end with a newline, or not? At first glance this may seem like a tabs vs. spaces discussion, but the POSIX standard provides the following definitions:

  • Text File: A file that contains characters organized into zero or more lines.

  • Line: A sequence of zero or more non-newline characters plus a terminating newline character.

By definition, a text file without a newline has zero lines. It seems to me that every text file with content should have at least one line, which means it needs to end with a newline.

So, keep your editor configured as it is, and add this to the end of layouts/_default/_markup/render-link.html:

{{- /* This comment removes trailing newlines. */ -}}

Here’s a screen capture of my editor:

image

You are not the first to encounter this behavior, nor will you be the last. See:

As these issues have been closed without action (implicitly “as designed”), I am disinclined to create a new issue.

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