ltrim

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

ltrim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string

Description

string ltrim ( string $str [, string $charlist ] )

Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string.

Parameters

str

The input string.

charlist

You can also specify the characters you want to strip, by means of the charlist parameter. Simply list all characters that you want to be stripped. With .. you can specify a range of characters.

Return Values

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning of str. Without the second parameter, ltrim() 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.
  • "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

Changelog

Version Description
4.1.0 The charlist parameter was added.

Examples

Example #1 Usage example of ltrim()

<?php

$text = "\t\tThese are a few words :) ...  ";
$binary = "\x09Example string\x0A";
$hello  = "Hello World";
var_dump($text, $binary, $hello);

print "\n";


$trimmed = ltrim($text);
var_dump($trimmed);

$trimmed = ltrim($text, " \t.");
var_dump($trimmed);

$trimmed = ltrim($hello, "Hdle");
var_dump($trimmed);

// trim the ASCII control characters at the beginning of $binary
// (from 0 to 31 inclusive)
$clean = ltrim($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(30) "These are a few words :) ...  "
string(30) "These are a few words :) ...  "
string(7) "o World"
string(15) "Example string
"

See Also

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