What's the best way to trim std::string?

Question

I\'m currently using the following code to right-trim all the std::strings in my programs:

std::string s;
s.erase(s.find_last_not_of(\" \\n\\r\\         


        

Answer 1

With C++17 you can use basic_string_view::remove_prefix and basic_string_view::remove_suffix:

std::string_view trim(std::string_view s)
{
    s.remove_prefix(std::min(s.find_first_not_of(" \t\r\v\n"), s.size()));
    s.remove_suffix(std::min(s.size() - s.find_last_not_of(" \t\r\v\n") - 1, s.size()));

    return s;
}

A nice alternative:

std::string_view ltrim(std::string_view s)
{
    s.remove_prefix(std::distance(s.cbegin(), std::find_if(s.cbegin(), s.cend(),
         [](int c) {return !std::isspace(c);})));

    return s;
}

std::string_view rtrim(std::string_view s)
{
    s.remove_suffix(std::distance(s.crbegin(), std::find_if(s.crbegin(), s.crend(),
        [](int c) {return !std::isspace(c);})));

    return s;
}

std::string_view trim(std::string_view s)
{
    return ltrim(rtrim(s));
}

Answer 2

This can be done more simply in C++11 due to the addition of back() and pop_back().

while ( !s.empty() && isspace(s.back()) ) s.pop_back();

Answer 3

For what it's worth, here is a trim implementation with an eye towards performance. It's much quicker than many other trim routines I've seen around. Instead of using iterators and std::finds, it uses raw c strings and indices. It optimizes the following special cases: size 0 string (do nothing), string with no whitespace to trim (do nothing), string with only trailing whitespace to trim (just resize the string), string that's entirely whitespace (just clear the string). And finally, in the worst case (string with leading whitespace), it does its best to perform an efficient copy construction, performing only 1 copy and then moving that copy in place of the original string.

void TrimString(std::string & str)
{ 
    if(str.empty())
        return;

    const auto pStr = str.c_str();

    size_t front = 0;
    while(front < str.length() && std::isspace(int(pStr[front]))) {++front;}

    size_t back = str.length();
    while(back > front && std::isspace(int(pStr[back-1]))) {--back;}

    if(0 == front)
    {
        if(back < str.length())
        {
            str.resize(back - front);
        }
    }
    else if(back <= front)
    {
        str.clear();
    }
    else
    {
        str = std::move(std::string(str.begin()+front, str.begin()+back));
    }
}

Answer 4

Here's what I came up with:

std::stringstream trimmer;
trimmer << str;
trimmer >> str;

Stream extraction eliminates whitespace automatically, so this works like a charm.
Pretty clean and elegant too, if I do say so myself. ;)

Answer 5

Yet another option - removes one or more characters from both ends.

string strip(const string& s, const string& chars=" ") {
    size_t begin = 0;
    size_t end = s.size()-1;
    for(; begin < s.size(); begin++)
        if(chars.find_first_of(s[begin]) == string::npos)
            break;
    for(; end > begin; end--)
        if(chars.find_first_of(s[end]) == string::npos)
            break;
    return s.substr(begin, end-begin+1);
}

Answer 6

My solution based on the answer by @Bill the Lizard.

Note that these functions will return the empty string if the input string contains nothing but whitespace.

const std::string StringUtils::WHITESPACE = " \n\r\t";

std::string StringUtils::Trim(const std::string& s)
{
    return TrimRight(TrimLeft(s));
}

std::string StringUtils::TrimLeft(const std::string& s)
{
    size_t startpos = s.find_first_not_of(StringUtils::WHITESPACE);
    return (startpos == std::string::npos) ? "" : s.substr(startpos);
}

std::string StringUtils::TrimRight(const std::string& s)
{
    size_t endpos = s.find_last_not_of(StringUtils::WHITESPACE);
    return (endpos == std::string::npos) ? "" : s.substr(0, endpos+1);
}