trim

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

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

Description

trim(string $string, string $characters = " \n\r\t\v\x00"): string

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of string. 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.
"\v" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

Parameters

string: The string that will be trimmed.
characters: Optionally, the stripped characters can also be specified using the characters parameter. Simply list all characters that need to be stripped. With .. it is possible to specify an incrementing range of characters.

Return Values

The trimmed string.

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);

$trimmed = trim($hello, 'HdWr');
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(9) "ello Worl"
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"
}

Notes

Note: Possible gotcha: removing middle characters
Because trim() trims characters from the beginning and end of a string, it may be confusing when characters are (or are not) removed from the middle. trim('abc', 'bad') removes both 'a' and 'b' because it trims 'a' thus moving 'b' to the beginning to also be trimmed. So, this is why it "works" whereas trim('abc', 'b') seemingly does not.

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User Contributed Notes 2 notes

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pcoates at yukon1000 dot com ¶

1 year ago

note there is a behaviour change in php 8

You used to be able to say:
$p1 = trim($_POST['p1']);
This will now throw deprecated warnings if parameter p1 is not set. It is better to say:
$p1 = trim($_POST['p1']??'');
or 
$p1 = isset($_POST['p1']) ? trim($_POST['p1']) : null;
or
$p1 = isset($_POST['p1']) ? trim($_POST['p1']) : '';