Perl trim function to strip whit…

Perl trim function to strip whitespace from a string

Perl does not have a built-in trim function. Use the subroutine below to trim whitespace (spaces and tabs) from the beginning and end of a string in Perl. This function is directly based on the Perl FAQ entry, How do I strip blank space from the beginning/end of a string?. The ltrim and rtrim functions can trim leading or trailing whitespace.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Declare the subroutines

sub trim($);

sub ltrim($);

sub rtrim($);

# Create a test string

my $string = "  \t  Hello world!   ";

# Here is how to output the trimmed text "Hello world!"

print trim($string)."\n";

print ltrim($string)."\n";

print rtrim($string)."\n";

# Perl trim function to remove whitespace from the start and end of the string

sub trim($)

{

 my $string = shift;

 $string =~ s/^\s+//;

 $string =~ s/\s+$//;

 return $string;

}

# Left trim function to remove leading whitespace

sub ltrim($)

{

 my $string = shift;

 $string =~ s/^\s+//;

 return $string;

}

# Right trim function to remove trailing whitespace

sub rtrim($)

{

 my $string = shift;

 $string =~ s/\s+$//;

 return $string;

}