(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)
ltrim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string
$str
[, string $character_mask
] )Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string.
strThe 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.
This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the
beginning of str.
Without the second parameter,
ltrim() will strip these characters:
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 "
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.
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).
When using a $character_mask the trimming stops at the first character that is not on that mask.
So in the $string = "Hello world" example with $character_mask = "Hdle", ltrim($hello, $character_mask) goes like this:
1. Check H from "Hello world" => it is in the $character_mask, so remove it
2. Check e from "ello world" => it is in the $character_mask, so remove it
3. Check l from "llo world" => it is in the $character_mask, so remove it
4. Check l from "lo world" => it is in the $character_mask, so remove it
5. Check o from "o world" => it is NOT in the $character_mask, exit the function
Remaining string is "o world".
I hope it helps someone as I had a confusing moment with this function.
@scion4581
The problem is that the character mask (_stw in your case) isn't a literal string, but a character collection. So all characters within _stw are stripped. In your case this includes the w of weight also.
To remove leading/trailing zeroes (example: "0123.4560"), doing a += 0 is easier than trim tricks.
What i found and i can't get why:
$word = 'stw_weight';
echo ltrim($word, 'stw_');
output: eight instead weight
If anybody know plz let me know
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.
