diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 1dbb04138c..3ec4453bcd 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -39,3 +39,4 @@ doc/protocol-binary.txt
 /timedrun
 /doc/doxy
 /memcached.spec
+.*.swp
diff --git a/t/whitespace.t b/t/whitespace.t
index 7d5d916913..d2a1564db4 100755
--- a/t/whitespace.t
+++ b/t/whitespace.t
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ BEGIN {
     push(@exempted, glob("doc/xml2rfc/*.xsl"));
     push(@exempted, glob("m4/*backport*m4"));
     push(@exempted, glob("*.orig"));
+    push(@exempted, glob(".*.swp"));
     my %exempted_hash = map { $_ => 1 } @exempted;
 
     my @stuff = split /\0/, `git ls-files -z -c -m -o --exclude-standard`;