How to delete all whitespace up to the first non-whitespace character?

Question

I'm looking for an emacs function that will delete all whitespace from the cursor position (including newlines) until the first non-whitespace character.

For example, if my cursor is positioned at the end of the first line:

main(arg1,
     arg2)

The delete function would result in:

main(arg1,arg2)

Answer 1

You might find the hungry-delete package useful. I personally bind C-cdelete to delete whitespace after point, and C-cbackspace to delete whitespace before point like so

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <backspace>") 'hungry-delete-backward)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <deletechar>") 'hungry-delete-forward)

update: as of 12.2018 function definitions changed hence:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <backspace>") 'c-hungry-delete-backward)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c <deletechar>") 'c-hungry-delete-forward)

Answer 2

I use this quite often:

(defun join-line* ()
  "Join this line with the next line deleting extra white space."
  (interactive)
  (join-line t))

(global-set-key (kbd "M-j") #'join-line*) ;; just key binding I use…

Answer 3

C-k M-\

C-k - Kill rest of line or one or more lines (kill-line).

M-\ - Delete spaces and tabs around point (delete-horizontal-space).

Answer 4

Yet another solution

(defun foo ()
  (interactive)
  (delete-region (point)
                 (+ (save-excursion (skip-chars-forward " \n"))
                    (point))))