String Functions
PHP Manual

ltrim

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

Description

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

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

Parameters

str

The input string.

character_mask

You can also specify the characters you want to strip, by means of the character_mask 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 character_mask 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
  • rtrim