Edit "at least 6 characters" restriction prevents useful edit

Question

I got the error

Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?

while editing a post (I was not sure about writing the link to avoid meta effect)

My edit was only a format improvement, turning something like this:

root@host:/path# somecommand somearguments someoutput newlineoutput somedetails newlineagain moreinfo

into something like this:

root@host:/path# somecommand somearguments
someoutput
newlineoutput somedetails
newlineagain moreinfo

As told before, it was not possible due to the "6 characters" restriction, even (if being rigorous) I added 4 characters each line.

So I tried changing (adding) tags, but still did not let me send the edit, which makes sense since I didn't add new content in the body.

So my question/petition is:

While not counting spaces may be useful sometimes, is there any way to discern the useful ones? Should the system let me send that edit?

Answer 1

This has come up a few times before now. Nothing has changed since then:

• Look for further edits (most posts have more than one issue with them)
• See if there are any actual improvements you could make (rather than just corrections) like sucking in information languishing in comments, etc.
• Benign rephrasings
• HTML comments <!-- -->
• And if something's really important, you can always drop into the chat room or flag it for moderators and explain the problem.

Essentially what the problem is by design. It's rarely an show-stopping issue so we get along with it.