LTRIM (Transact-SQL)

**APPLIES TO:** ![yes](media/yes.png)SQL Server (starting with 2008) ![yes](media/yes.png)Azure SQL Database ![yes](media/yes.png)Azure SQL Data Warehouse ![yes](media/yes.png)Parallel Data Warehouse

Returns a character expression after it removes leading blanks.

Topic link icon Transact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

LTRIM ( character_expression )

Arguments

character_expression
Is an expression of character or binary data. character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column. character_expression must be of a data type, except text, ntext, and image, that is implicitly convertible to varchar. Otherwise, use CAST to explicitly convert character_expression.

Return Type

varchar or nvarchar

Examples

A. Simple example

The following example uses LTRIM to remove leading spaces from a character expression.

SELECT LTRIM('     Five spaces are at the beginning of this string.') FROM sys.databases;

Here is the result set.

---------------------------------------------------------------  
 Five spaces are at the beginning of this string.

B: Example using a variable

The following example uses LTRIM to remove leading spaces from a character variable.

DECLARE @string_to_trim varchar(60);  
SET @string_to_trim = '     5 spaces are at the beginning of this string.';  
SELECT 
    @string_to_trim AS 'Original string',
    LTRIM(@string_to_trim) AS 'Without spaces';  
GO