There are 4 PHP functions you can use remove white space characters from the beginning and/or the end of a string:

► trim() - Remove white space characters from the beginning and the end of a string.

► ltrim() - Remove white space characters from the beginning of a string.

► rtrim() - Remove white space characters from the end of a string.

► chop() - Same as rtrim().

White space characters are defined as:

► " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.

► " " (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.

► " " (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).

► " " (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.

► "" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NULL-byte.

► "x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

Here is a PHP script example of trimming strings:

<?php

$text = " Hello world! ";

$leftTrimmed = ltrim($text);

$rightTrimmed = rtrim($text);

$bothTrimmed = trim($text);

print("leftTrimmed = ($leftTrimmed) ");

print("rightTrimmed = ($rightTrimmed) ");

print("bothTrimmed = ($bothTrimmed) ");

?>

This script will print:

leftTrimmed = (Hello world!   )
rightTrimmed = (  Hello world!)
bothTrimmed = (Hello world!)