A string tag that strips indentation from multi-line strings. β¬ οΈ
npm i dedentimport dedent from "dedent";
function usageExample() {
const first = dedent`A string that gets so long you need to break it over
multiple lines. Luckily dedent is here to keep it
readable without lots of spaces ending up in the string
itself.`;
const second = dedent`
Leading and trailing lines will be trimmed, so you can write something like
this and have it work as you expect:
* how convenient it is
* that I can use an indented list
- and still have it do the right thing
That's all.
`;
const third = dedent(`
Wait! I lied. Dedent can also be used as a function.
`);
return first + "\n\n" + second + "\n\n" + third;
}
console.log(usageExample());A string that gets so long you need to break it over
multiple lines. Luckily dedent is here to keep it
readable without lots of spaces ending up in the string
itself.
Leading and trailing lines will be trimmed, so you can write something like
this and have it work as you expect:
* how convenient it is
* that I can use an indented list
- and still have it do the right thing
That's all.
Wait! I lied. Dedent can also be used as a function.
You can customize the options dedent runs with by calling its withOptions method with an object:
import dedent from 'dedent';
dedent.withOptions({ /* ... */ })`input`;
dedent.withOptions({ /* ... */ })(`input`);options returns a new dedent function, so if you'd like to reuse the same options, you can create a dedicated dedent function:
import dedent from 'dedent';
const dedenter = dedent.withOptions({ /* ... */ });
dedenter`input`;
dedenter(`input`);When an interpolation evaluates to a multi-line string, only its first line is placed where the ${...} appears. Subsequent lines keep whatever indentation they already had inside that value (often none), so they can appear βshifted leftβ.
Enable alignValues to fix that visual jump. When true, for every multi-line interpolated value, each line after the first gets extra indentation appended so it starts in the same column as the first line.
import dedent from "dedent";
const list = dedent`
- apples
- bananas
- cherries
`;
const withoutAlign = dedent`
List without alignValues (default):
${list}
Done.
`;
const withAlign = dedent.withOptions({ alignValues: true })`
List with alignValues: true
${list}
Done.
`;
console.log(withoutAlign);
console.log("---");
console.log(withAlign);List without alignValues (default):
- apples
- bananas
- cherries
Done.
---
List with alignValues: true
- apples
- bananas
- cherries
Done.
JavaScript string tags by default add an extra \ escape in front of some special characters such as $ dollar signs.
dedent will escape those special characters when called as a string tag.
If you'd like to change the behavior, an escapeSpecialCharacters option is available.
It defaults to:
false: whendedentis called as a functiontrue: whendedentis called as a string tag
import dedent from "dedent";
// "$hello!"
dedent`
$hello!
`;
// "\$hello!"
dedent.withOptions({ escapeSpecialCharacters: false })`
$hello!
`;
// "$hello!"
dedent.withOptions({ escapeSpecialCharacters: true })`
$hello!
`;For more context, see π Feature: Add an option to disable special character escaping.
By default, dedent will trim leading and trailing whitespace from the overall string.
This can be disabled by setting trimWhitespace: false.
import dedent from "dedent";
// "hello!"
dedent`
hello!
`;
// "\nhello! \n"
dedent.withOptions({ trimWhitespace: false })`
hello!
`;
// "hello!"
dedent.withOptions({ trimWhitespace: true })`
hello!
`;MIT
π This package was templated with create-typescript-app.
