localeconv
To remove leading/trailing zeroes (example: "0123.4560"), doing a += 0 is easier than trim tricks.
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
charlistparameter. 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 "
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User Contributed Notes
ltrim - [6 notes]
John Sherwood ¶
6 years ago
Usamah M dot Ali (usamah1228 at gmail dot com) ¶
5 years ago
For those who use right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, etc., it's worth mentioning that ltrim() (which stands for left trim) & rtrim() (which stands for right trim) DO NOT work contextually. The nomenclature is rather semantically incorrect. So in an RTL script, ltrim() will trim text from the right direction (i.e. beginning of RTL strings), and rtrim() will trim text from the left direction (i.e. end of RTL strings).
dzek dot remove_this at dzek dot eu ¶
1 year ago
Guys, if += 0 is producing wrong values sometimes, and preg_replace is cpu consuming, then just stick to the main function described on that page, and use:
<?php
$value = ltrim($value, '0');
?>
should be the fastest and most reliable.
I think all those comments can be misleading for begginers checking this page - it's sort of using magic tricks to reinvent the wheel.
Mike ¶
2 years ago
Keep in mind the amount of resources preg_replace() uses.
I would suggest a simple if statement if you need to parse through large amounts of data.
<?php
function remove_leading_zeros_from_number($number_string) {
$limit = 9000.1
$temp = $number
(float) $temp;
if ($number < $limit) {
$number += 0;
} else {
preg_replace('~^[0]*([1-9][0-9]*)$~','$1',$number_string)
}
}
?>
Code is untested, but probably sound.
tanmar.de ¶
2 years ago
The neat trick from Mr. Sherwood has only one ugly side-effect: If the "number" contained in the string is considerably large, you will end up with an int (or float) value that has nothing to do with the original number ...
You may use preg_replace instead:
$number_string = preg_replace('~^[0]*([1-9][0-9]*)$~','$1',$number_string);
This kills any leading zeros safely without changing any other data.
Hope this helps.
pLIMP ¶
9 months ago
Function similar to ltrim only it will remove everything from the start of the string to the last occurence of anything in the $charlist
<?php
function lstrip($string, $charlist) {
// removes everything from start of string to last occurence of char in charlist
$charlist = str_split($charlist);
foreach ($charlist as $char) {
$pos = max(strrpos($string, $char), $pos);
}
$string_stripped = substr($string, $pos + 1);
return $string_stripped;
}
?>