WeberDev.com -> PHP Manual -> 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);

?>