What is the preferred way to remove spaces from a string in C++? I could loop through all the characters and build a new string, but is there a better way?
19 Answers
The best thing to do is to use the algorithm remove_if and isspace:
remove_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isspace);
Now the algorithm itself can't change the container(only modify the values), so it actually shuffles the values around and returns a pointer to where the end now should be. So we have to call string::erase to actually modify the length of the container:
str.erase(remove_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isspace), str.end());
We should also note that remove_if will make at most one copy of the data. Here is a sample implementation:
template<typename T, typename P>
T remove_if(T beg, T end, P pred)
{
T dest = beg;
for (T itr = beg;itr != end; ++itr)
if (!pred(*itr))
*(dest++) = *itr;
return dest;
}
20 Comments
erase afterwards. That will return the correct result.isspace is UB for all character sets except original 7-bit ASCII. C99 §7.4/1. it does not surprise me that it's been upvoted to the tune of 71 votes by now, in spite of being Very Bad Advice.isspace, for all non-ASCII characters, with the in-practice default choice of signedness for char. Thus it has undefined behavior. I'm repeating it because I suspect a deliberate attempt to drown that fact in noise.std::string::iterator end_pos = std::remove(str.begin(), str.end(), ' ');
str.erase(end_pos, str.end());
From gamedev
string.erase(std::remove_if(string.begin(), string.end(), std::isspace), string.end());
3 Comments
::isspace is UB.string.erase(std::remove_if(string.begin(), string.end(), [](unsigned char x) { return std::isspace(x); }), string.end());Can you use Boost String Algo? http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_35_0/doc/html/string_algo/usage.html#id1290573
erase_all(str, " ");
1 Comment
remove_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isspace); that Matt Price mentioned. I don't know why. Actually, all the boost stuff, that have STL alternatives, are slower than the corresponding gcc ones (All the ones I tested). Some of them are immensely slower! (up to 5 times in unordered_map inserts) Maybe it is because of the CPU cache of the shared environment or something like it.You can use this solution for removing a char:
#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
str.erase(remove(str.begin(), str.end(), char_to_remove), str.end());
3 Comments
For trimming, use boost string algorithms:
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
// ...
string str1(" hello world! ");
trim(str1); // str1 == "hello world!"
Comments
In C++20 you can use free function std::erase
std::string str = " Hello World !";
std::erase(str, ' ');
Full example:
#include<string>
#include<iostream>
int main() {
std::string str = " Hello World !";
std::erase(str, ' ');
std::cout << "|" << str <<"|";
}
I print | so that it is obvious that space at the begining is also removed.
note: this removes only the space, not every other possible character that may be considered whitespace, see https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/byte/isspace
1 Comment
Hi, you can do something like that. This function deletes all spaces.
string delSpaces(string &str)
{
str.erase(std::remove(str.begin(), str.end(), ' '), str.end());
return str;
}
I made another function, that deletes all unnecessary spaces.
string delUnnecessary(string &str)
{
int size = str.length();
for(int j = 0; j<=size; j++)
{
for(int i = 0; i <=j; i++)
{
if(str[i] == ' ' && str[i+1] == ' ')
{
str.erase(str.begin() + i);
}
else if(str[0]== ' ')
{
str.erase(str.begin());
}
else if(str[i] == '\0' && str[i-1]== ' ')
{
str.erase(str.end() - 1);
}
}
}
return str;
}
Comments
string replaceinString(std::string str, std::string tofind, std::string toreplace)
{
size_t position = 0;
for ( position = str.find(tofind); position != std::string::npos; position = str.find(tofind,position) )
{
str.replace(position ,1, toreplace);
}
return(str);
}
use it:
string replace = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "%20");
string replace2 = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "-");
string replace3 = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "+");
Comments
If you want to do this with an easy macro, here's one:
#define REMOVE_SPACES(x) x.erase(std::remove(x.begin(), x.end(), ' '), x.end())
This assumes you have done #include <string> of course.
Call it like so:
std::string sName = " Example Name ";
REMOVE_SPACES(sName);
printf("%s",sName.c_str()); // requires #include <stdio.h>
4 Comments
Removes all whitespace characters such as tabs and line breaks (C++11):
string str = " \n AB cd \t efg\v\n";
str = regex_replace(str,regex("\\s"),"");
4 Comments
#include <algorithm> using namespace std; int main() { . . s.erase( remove( s.begin(), s.end(), ' ' ), s.end() ); . . }
Source:
Reference taken from this forum.
7 Comments
I used the below work around for long - not sure about its complexity.
s.erase(std::unique(s.begin(),s.end(),[](char s,char f){return (f==' '||s==' ');}),s.end());
when you wanna remove character ' ' and some for example - use
s.erase(std::unique(s.begin(),s.end(),[](char s,char f){return ((f==' '||s==' ')||(f=='-'||s=='-'));}),s.end());
likewise just increase the || if number of characters you wanna remove is not 1
but as mentioned by others the erase remove idiom also seems fine.
Comments
string removeSpaces(string word) {
string newWord;
for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
if (word[i] != ' ') {
newWord += word[i];
}
}
return newWord;
}
This code basically takes a string and iterates through every character in it. It then checks whether that string is a white space, if it isn't then the character is added to a new string.
Comments
Just for fun, as other answers are much better than this.
#include <boost/hana/functional/partial.hpp>
#include <iostream>
#include <range/v3/range/conversion.hpp>
#include <range/v3/view/filter.hpp>
int main() {
using ranges::to;
using ranges::views::filter;
using boost::hana::partial;
auto const& not_space = partial(std::not_equal_to<>{}, ' ');
auto const& to_string = to<std::string>;
std::string input = "2C F4 32 3C B9 DE";
std::string output = input | filter(not_space) | to_string;
assert(output == "2CF4323CB9DE");
}
Comments
I created a function, that removes the white spaces from the either ends of string. Such as
" Hello World ", will be converted into "Hello world".
This works similar to strip, lstrip and rstrip functions, which are frequently used in python.
string strip(string str) {
while (str[str.length() - 1] == ' ') {
str = str.substr(0, str.length() - 1);
}
while (str[0] == ' ') {
str = str.substr(1, str.length() - 1);
}
return str;
}
string lstrip(string str) {
while (str[0] == ' ') {
str = str.substr(1, str.length() - 1);
}
return str;
}
string rstrip(string str) {
while (str[str.length() - 1] == ' ') {
str = str.substr(0, str.length() - 1);
}
return str;
}
Comments
string removespace(string str)
{
int m = str.length();
int i=0;
while(i<m)
{
while(str[i] == 32)
str.erase(i,1);
i++;
}
}
2 Comments
length() returns a size_t, not an int. erase() takes a size_type, not an int. The function will probably fail if two consecutive spaces are encountered since the index is always incremented. If one space is removed, then the loop will read beyond the string's bounds. You should probably delete this answer since it needs a lot of help.I'm afraid it's the best solution that I can think of. But you can use reserve() to pre-allocate the minimum required memory in advance to speed up things a bit. You'll end up with a new string that will probably be shorter but that takes up the same amount of memory, but you'll avoid reallocations.
EDIT: Depending on your situation, this may incur less overhead than jumbling characters around.
You should try different approaches and see what is best for you: you might not have any performance issues at all.