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

# 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

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