Date:: 29 March, 2007
Comments: 8 comments
: Posted by Stewart

Javascript: trim leading and trailing spaces

Here's a quick function to remove leading, trailing and multiple spaces from a string using regular expression which is much faster that using loops! This can be used to tidy up input values.

The trim function

The function makes 3 regular expression calls to remove spaces at the start, the end and any multiple spaces.

// remove multiple, leading or trailing spaces
function trim(s) {
	s = s.replace(/(^\s*)|(\s*$)/gi,"");
	s = s.replace(/[ ]{2,}/gi," ");
	s = s.replace(/\n /,"\n");
	return s;
}

To use it, do something like this:-

alert(trim(" My name is stewart "));

It will strip the spaces at the start, end and also any multiple spaces in the middle to give a nicely formatted string! Simple, eh?

Download the complete Javascript remove leading and trailing spaces now!

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Comments (8)

What others have said about this post.

About 5 years ago vectorialpx said:

that's nice...
About 5 years ago Ace_NoOne said:

Very nice - thanks! (Why the s.replace(/\n /,"\n") though - what's that for?)
About 5 years ago Stewart said:

That simply removes any spaces that come after a new line. It could be optimized to remove multiple spaces after a new line.
About 4 years ago Rishi Katara said:

working very nice, thanx.
About 4 years ago Ryan said:

Implement the trim method as a prototype. Have a look at this article: http://www.whadiz.com/what-is.aspx/programming/javascript/javascript-trim
Last Edit: February 12, 2010, 23:19:10 by qodo
About 2 years ago Hector said:

Thanks, I was trying hard to make it work, found regexp to be kinda confusing, your method is great.
About 5 months ago SanthanaKrishnan N said:

Can u pls explain me the code.. am a newbie to javascript..
About 3 months ago Mads said:

Thanks a lot for the code. It is very helpful for people like me:)