Haml: Control whitespace around text

Question

In my Rails template, I\'d like to accomplish final HTML to this effect using HAML:

I will first link somewhere         


        

Answer 1

You can also do this using Haml's "trim whitespace" modifier. Inserting > after a Haml declaration will prevent whitespace from being added around it:

I will first
%a{:href => 'http://example.com'}> link somewhere
- if @condition
  , then render this half of the sentence if a condition is met

produces:

I will firstlink somewhere, then render this half of the sentence if a condition is met

However, as you can see, the > modifier also strips the whitespace in front of the link, removing the desired space between the words and the link. I haven't figured a pretty way around this yet, except to add   to the end of "I will first", like so:

I will first 
%a{:href => 'http://example.com'}> link somewhere
- if @condition
  , then render this half of the sentence if a condition is met

Which finally produces the desired output without lots of hard-to-read interpolation:

I will first link somewhere, then render this half of the sentence if a condition is met