ltrim

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

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

Description

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

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

Without the second parameter, mb_ltrim() will strip these characters:

  • " ": ASCII SP character 0x20, an ordinary space.
  • "\t": ASCII HT character 0x09, a tab.
  • "\n": ASCII LF character 0x0A, a new line (line feed).
  • "\r": ASCII CR character 0x0D, a carriage return.
  • "\0": ASCII NUL character 0x00, the NUL-byte.
  • "\v": ASCII VT character 0x0B, a vertical tab.

Parameters

string
The input string.
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

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning of string.

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