trim Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string &reftitle.description; stringtrim stringstr stringcharacter_mask" \t\n\r\0\x0B" This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str. Without the second parameter, trim 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. &reftitle.parameters; str The string that will be trimmed. character_mask Optionally, the stripped characters can also be specified using the character_mask parameter. Simply list all characters that you want to be stripped. With .. you can specify a range of characters. &reftitle.returnvalues; The trimmed string. &reftitle.examples; ]]> &example.outputs; ]]> &example.outputs; string(5) "apple" [1]=> string(7) "banana " [2]=> string(11) " cranberry " } array(3) { [0]=> string(5) "apple" [1]=> string(6) "banana" [2]=> string(9) "cranberry" } ]]> &reftitle.notes; Because trim trims characters from the beginning and end of a string, it may be confusing when characters are (or are not) removed from the middle. trim('abc', 'bad') removes both 'a' and 'b' because it trims 'a' thus moving 'b' to the beginning to also be trimmed. So, this is why it "works" whereas trim('abc', 'b') seemingly does not. &reftitle.seealso; ltrim rtrim str_replace