Cracking the Code: Resolving Line-Breaks Style Error in VSCode

Introduction

It sucked when I encountered line break style errors in my Visual Studio code after cloning an open-source repository. After searching for different solutions online, it took me days to figure out a solution.

In this article, you will learn what a line break style error is and how to resolve it.

What is a line break style error?

Line break style error is associated with inconsistencies in how your text editor inserts new lines at the end of each line.

Why does this error occur?

This error occurs because various operating systems (OS) use different characters for line breaks.

For example, Windows OS uses two characters: Carriage Return (CR) followed by Line Feed (CRLF), represented as \rn. At the same time, Unix/Linux uses a single character: Line Feed (LF), represented as \n.

Also, Code linters such as ESLint can be used to enforce a specified line break style (for example, just LF) and flag inconsistencies as errors.

How did I discover the line break style error?

I discovered the error while trying to commit my changes from a cloned open-source documentation repository and perceived the repository was set on Unix/Linux OS.

The error thrown is stated below:

error: Expected linebreaks to be 'LF' but found 'CRLF' linebreak-style

Resolving the error

The first step to resolve this error was copying and pasting it on my Google Chrome browser to search for possible solutions, but none worked.
I will show you what worked for me; before that, you can try out the following:

Solution one

• Go to your VS code settings.

• In the search bar, type \eol and select \n

This will change your line breaks from CRLF to LF.

Solution two

In your editor, change CRLF to LF.

Solution three

Open git bash in your terminal and input this command
git config core.autocrlf = false

This command will set line breaks to UNIX line endings.

Solution four

• Open git bash and cd into the file directory you want to commit

• Enter this command to convert the file to Unix format
  dos2unix your file name

Yes, this was what worked for me, having tried the previous solutions.

Conclusion

I hope this will help when you encounter such an error.
Thanks for reading!!