Since Groovy 1.7.3 we can use the stripMargin() method to strip characters up to and including a margin character from multiline strings. The default character is the pipe symbol (|), but we can pass a parameter to the method and use a custom character.
def s = '''\
|Groovy
|Grails
|Griffon'''
assert '''\
Groovy
Grails
Griffon''' == s.stripMargin()
def s1 = '''\
* Gradle
* GPars
* Spock'''
assert '''\
Gradle
GPars
Spock''' == s1.stripMargin("* ")
