PHP trim
Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the PHP trim() function to remove whitespace or other characters from both ends of a string.
Introduction to the PHP trim() function
The trim() function removes the whitespaces or other characters from the beginning and end of a string.
Here’s the syntax of the trim() function:
trim ( string $string , string $characters = " \n\r\t\v\0" ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)
The trim() function has two parameters:
$stringis the input string that will be trimmed.$charactersargument is optional. It specifies which character to remove from both ends of the$string.
By default, the trim() function removes the following characters:
| Character | ASCII | Hex | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ” “ | 32 | 0x20 | a space |
| “\t” | 9 | 0x09 | a tab |
| “\n” | 10 | 0x0A | a new line |
| “\r” | 13 | 0x0D | a return |
| “\0” | 0 | 0x00 | a NUL-byte |
| “\v” | 11 | 0x0B | a vertical tab |
If you want to remove other characters, you can specify them in the $characters argument.
To specify a range of characters to remove, you can use the ‘..’. For example, to remove all ASCII control characters from both ends of a string, you use the following value for the $characters argument:
'\x00..\x1F'Code language: PHP (php)
It’s important to note that the trim() function doesn’t change the input string. It returns a new string with all the $characters removed.
PHP trim() function examples
Let’s take some examples of using the PHP trim() function.
1) Using the PHP trim() function to remove whitespace from both ends of a string
The following example uses the trim() function to remove spaces from the beginning and the end of a string:
$str = ' PHP ';
$new_str = trim($str);
var_dump($new_str);
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
string(3) "PHP"Code language: plaintext (plaintext)
2) Using the PHP trim() function to remove other characters
Suppose you have the following URL:
https://www.phptutorial.net/api/v1/posts/Code language: PHP (php)
To get the request URI, you access the $_SERVER array with the key 'REQUEST_URI':
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
echo $uri;
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
/api/v1/posts/Code language: plaintext (plaintext)
The URI contains both leading and trailing slashes.
To remove the slashes (/) from both ends of the URI, you can use the trim() function:
$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
echo trim($uri,'/');
Code language: PHP (php)
Output:
api/v1/postsCode language: plaintext (plaintext)
Summary
- Use the PHP
trim()function to remove whitespaces or other characters from both ends of a string.