trim

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

trim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string

Description

string trim ( string $str [, string $charlist ] )

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str. Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters:

• " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
• "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
• "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
• "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
• "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
• "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

Parameters

str

The string that will be trimmed.

charlist

Optionally, the stripped characters can also be specified using the charlist parameter. Simply list all characters that you want to be stripped. With .. you can specify a range of characters.

Return Values

The trimmed string.

Changelog

Version	Description
4.1.0	The optional charlist parameter was added.

Examples

Example #1 Usage example of trim()

<?php

$text   = "\t\tThese are a few words :) ...  ";
$binary = "\x09Example string\x0A";
$hello  = "Hello World";
var_dump($text, $binary, $hello);

print "\n";

$trimmed = trim($text);
var_dump($trimmed);

$trimmed = trim($text, " \t.");
var_dump($trimmed);

$trimmed = trim($hello, "Hdle");
var_dump($trimmed);

// trim the ASCII control characters at the beginning and end of $binary
// (from 0 to 31 inclusive)
$clean = trim($binary, "\x00..\x1F");
var_dump($clean);

?>

The above example will output:

string(32) "        These are a few words :) ...  "
string(16) "    Example string
"
string(11) "Hello World"

string(28) "These are a few words :) ..."
string(24) "These are a few words :)"
string(5) "o Wor"
string(14) "Example string"

Example #2 Trimming array values with trim()

<?php
function trim_value(&$value) 
{ 
    $value = trim($value); 
}

$fruit = array('apple','banana ', ' cranberry ');
var_dump($fruit);

array_walk($fruit, 'trim_value');
var_dump($fruit);

?>

The above example will output:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(5) "apple"
  [1]=>
  string(7) "banana "
  [2]=>
  string(11) " cranberry "
}
array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(5) "apple"
  [1]=>
  string(6) "banana"
  [2]=>
  string(9) "cranberry"
}

See Also

• ltrim() - Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string
• rtrim() - Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the end of a string