How to remove empty lines from visually selected block?

Question

I am using following mapping. The command works fine but when I open a new file, all the empty lines are highlighted. Could you please check my mapping?

vnoremap <leader>n :g/^$/d<CR><Esc>

Thank you!

Answer 1

If you don't want your substitution to impact hlsearch, you can execute it within a function, which effectively creates a kind of bubble (a closure) around the commands in its body:

function! Trim() range
    execute a:firstline .. ',' .. a:lastline .. 'g/^$/d'
endfunction
xnoremap <leader>n :call Trim()<CR>

Note that, while this solution is slightly more involved than the other one, it has the advantage of leaving the search register completely untouched: you don't get the unwanted ^$ but you don't get random garbage either, which is a lot cleaner and makes the search register actually reusable.

See :help function-range.

Answer 2

Your command is good but it set the search register / to ^$ that highlight the empty lines if hlsearch is set.

To avoid that you could do:

vnoremap <leader>n :g/^$/d<CR>:let @/='h6d4o9kz'<CR><Esc>