I didn't find any good examples of how to replace spaceless with the existing whitespace controls. So here's what I did:

{% apply spaceless %}
  <span>1</span>
  <span>2</span>
  <span>3</span>
{% endapply %}

To rewrite this without spaceless, I used {{ }} with a null condition and the appropriate whitespace controls:

  <span>1</span>{{ null -}}
  <span>2</span>{{ null -}}
  <span>3</span>

I experimented with other "null" conditions, and the following also work: {{ '' -}} , {{ "" -}} , and {{ false -}}, but I find {{ null -}} to be my personal preference.

Not sure if there is a better syntax to handle this? It might be worth adding this example to the docs?

@ttk the shortest solution (and most efficient by disappearing entirely at runtime) is to use a comment to hold the whitespace control: {# -#}

@stof Thanks, that is exactly what I was looking for! I honestly didn't know that whitespace control worked on comments as well but after re-reviewing the docs, I see a single example shown here.