private function removeSuperfluousStartingWhitespace(string $contents): string
    {
        $lines = explode("\n", $contents);

        // if there is only one line then we don't have lines with superfluous whitespace and
        // can use the contents as-is
        if (count($lines) <= 1) {
            return $contents;
        }

        // determine how many whitespace characters need to be stripped
        $startingSpaceCount = 9999999;
        for ($i = 1; $i < count($lines); ++$i) {
            // lines with a no length do not count as they are not indented at all
            if (strlen(trim($lines[$i])) === 0) {
                continue;
            }

            // determine the number of prefixing spaces by checking the difference in line length before and after
            // an ltrim
            $startingSpaceCount = min($startingSpaceCount, strlen($lines[$i]) - strlen(ltrim($lines[$i])));
        }

        // strip the number of spaces from each line
        if ($startingSpaceCount > 0) {
            for ($i = 1; $i < count($lines); ++$i) {
                $lines[$i] = substr($lines[$i], $startingSpaceCount);
            }
        }

        return implode("\n", $lines);
    }