How to disable show-trailing-whitespace in emacs shell?

Question

I have set show-trailing-whitespace as default in my .emacs file but I don't want it to work on shell and some specific buffer. I can disable it manually every time I open an emacs shell but I want more of a permanent solution. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Chances are that you'll want to do this for numerous modes, so I would suggest using an approach which makes that simpler to specify. e.g.:

(defun my-hide-trailing-whitespace-maybe ()
  "Disable `show-trailing-whitespace' in selected modes."
  (when (derived-mode-p 'shell-mode
                        'some-other-mode
                        '...)
    (setq show-trailing-whitespace nil)))

(add-hook 'after-change-major-mode-hook
          'my-hide-trailing-whitespace-maybe)

Answer 2

Put the following line in your init-file:

 (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook (lambda ()
                             (setq show-trailing-whitespace nil)))

That disables show-trailing-whitespace locally in shell buffers. Change shell-mode-hook to any major mode hook you want if you like to disable show-trailing-whitespace also in other modes.