How to avoid adding unnecessary whitespaces while saving files

Help
1

I am using JabRef 5.5 on macOS 11.5.1. JabRef gives files like this:

@Article{key,
  author  = {Author},
  title   = {Title},
  year    = {2022},
}

I hardly edit bib files directly, so I hardly need the legibility achieved by aligning = with extra whitespaces, but on the other hand I do need the disk space occupied by those unnecessary whitespaces since I have a lot of entries. Therefore, I want to have JabRef save bib files like this:

@Article{key,
  author = {Author},
  title = {Title},
  year = {2022},
}

How to achieve this? I searched JabRef preferences and found no solution.

2

I haven’t found a setting for this. A workaround is to use search/replace of a text editor. But I don’t know if all entries are reformatted next time the database is saved from Jabref (which would make the proposed workaround useless).

3

I know how to achieve this with text editor. But every time I add a new entry, extra whitespaces are added to align =. Thus, JabRef should be tweaked to not align = for new entries. Thanks anyway.

4

The relevant github issue is here: An option for not aligning `=` when JabRef saves/imports bib files as well as adds new entries · Issue #8676 · JabRef/jabref · GitHub

Hi, this is not possible and I doubt we will add this feature. The alignment was done purposefully, so that users with version control systems or other comparison tools have no weird issues when comparing files.
For a history of the format evolution:
https://github.com/JabRef/blog.jabref.org/pull/47/files

On import and file opening, the bib file is read by JabRef's own Bibtex parser and a new library object is created which uses the alignment in the content serialization which is then also written to the file.