Or sticking with awk, I have this bash alias to remove excess whitespace that is just:

    awk '{$1=$1};1'

what does the 1 at the end do? make awk print all lines? I'm a bit rusty with my awk.

It’s a condition. 1 is true-ish, so it’s a condition that is always true. The default action in awk is print, so it’s the same as:

  '{$1=$1}1{print}'

Or the same as

  '{$1=$1}{print}'

Since the default condition is true. But 1 is shorter than {print}.