Multibyte trim in PHP?

Question

Apparently there\'s no mb_trim in the mb_* family, so I\'m trying to implement one for my own.

I recently found this regex in a comment in php.net:

Answer 1

Ok, so I took @edson-medina's solution and fixed a bug and added some unit tests. Here's the 3 functions we use to give mb counterparts to trim, rtrim, and ltrim.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//Add some multibyte core functions not in PHP
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
function mb_trim($string, $charlist = null) {
    if (is_null($charlist)) {
        return trim($string);
    } else {
        $charlist = preg_quote($charlist, '/');
        return preg_replace("/(^[$charlist]+)|([$charlist]+$)/us", '', $string);
    }
}
function mb_rtrim($string, $charlist = null) {
    if (is_null($charlist)) {
        return rtrim($string);
    } else {
        $charlist = preg_quote($charlist, '/');
        return preg_replace("/([$charlist]+$)/us", '', $string);
    }
}
function mb_ltrim($string, $charlist = null) {
    if (is_null($charlist)) {
        return ltrim($string);
    } else {
        $charlist = preg_quote($charlist, '/');
        return preg_replace("/(^[$charlist]+)/us", '', $string);
    }
}
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Here's the unit tests I wrote for anyone interested:

public function test_trim() {
    $this->assertEquals(trim(' foo '), mb_trim(' foo '));
    $this->assertEquals(trim(' foo ', ' o'), mb_trim(' foo ', ' o'));
    $this->assertEquals('foo', mb_trim(' Åfooホ ', ' Åホ'));
}

public function test_rtrim() {
    $this->assertEquals(rtrim(' foo '), mb_rtrim(' foo '));
    $this->assertEquals(rtrim(' foo ', ' o'), mb_rtrim(' foo ', ' o'));
    $this->assertEquals('foo', mb_rtrim('fooホ ', ' ホ'));
}

public function test_ltrim() {
    $this->assertEquals(ltrim(' foo '), mb_ltrim(' foo '));
    $this->assertEquals(ltrim(' foo ', ' o'), mb_ltrim(' foo ', ' o'));
    $this->assertEquals('foo', mb_ltrim(' Åfoo', ' Å'));
}

Answer 2

I don't know what you're trying to do with that endless recursive function you're defining, but if you just want a multibyte-safe trim, this will work.

function mb_trim($str) {
  return preg_replace("/^\s+|\s+$/u", "", $str); 
}