PHP ltrim

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the PHP ltrim() function to remove whitespace characters or other characters from the beginning of a string.

Introduction to the PHP ltrim() function

The PHP ltrim() function removes the whitespace characters or other characters from the beginning of a string.

Here’s the syntax of the ltrim() function:

ltrim ( string $string , string $characters = " \n\r\t\v\0" ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)

The ltrim() has the following parameters:

• $string is the input string
• $characters is one or more characters that you want to remove from the beginning of the string.

By default, the ltrim() function strips the characters in the list " \n\r\t\v\0" from the beginning of the string.

If you want to strip other characters, you can specify them in the $characters argument.

To remove a set of characters, you can use the .. syntax. For example, to remove all characters from a to z, you pass the the following string to the $characters argument:

'a..z'Code language: PHP (php)

It’s important to notice that the ltrim() function doesn’t modify the input string ($string). Instead, it returns a new string with the characters specified in the $characters removed.

PHP ltrim() function examples

Let’s take several examples of using the ltrim() function.

1) Using the PHP ltrim() function to remove whitespace characters

This example uses the ltrim() function to strip all the space characters from the beginning of a string:

<?php

$title = '  PHP tutorial';
$clean_title = ltrim($title);

var_dump($clean_title);Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

string(12) "PHP tutorial"Code language: PHP (php)

2) Using the PHP ltrim() function to remove other characters

The following example uses the ltrim() function to remove the slash (/) at the beginning of a string:

<?php
$uri = '/php-ltrim';
$new_uri = ltrim($uri, '/');

echo $new_uri;Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

php-ltrimCode language: PHP (php)

Summary

• Use the PHP ltrim() function to remove the whitespace characters or other characters from the beginning of a string.