SameShirtEveryDay.com

Unindenting a block of text involves finding a common minimum indent in every line and removing it. Here’s how I have done it. As with any text processing, the larger the text is, the slower it is.

def unindent_text(src)
  indents = []

  src.each_line do |line|
    indents < < $1.length if not line =~ /^\s*$/ and line =~ /^(\s+)/
  end

  indent = indents.min
  return src if indent == 0

  lines = []

  src.each_line do |line|
    lines << line.gsub(/^\s{#{indent}}/, '').gsub(/(\r\n|\n|\r)$/, '')
  end

  lines.join("\n")
end