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)

Try it

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)

Try it

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.