javascript - Trim spaces from start and end of string

Question

I am trying to find a way to trim spaces from the start and end of the title string. I was using this, but it doesn't seem to be working:

title = title.replace(/(^[s]+|[s]+$)/g, '');

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Note: As of 2015, all major browsers (including IE>=9) support String.prototype.trim(). This means that for most use cases simply doing str.trim() is the best way of achieving what the question asks.

---

Steven Levithan analyzed many different implementation of trim in Javascript in terms of performance.

His recommendation is:

function trim1 (str) {
    return str.replace(/^ss*/, '').replace(/ss*$/, '');
}

for "general-purpose implementation which is fast cross-browser", and

function trim11 (str) {
    str = str.replace(/^s+/, '');
    for (var i = str.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
        if (/S/.test(str.charAt(i))) {
            str = str.substring(0, i + 1);
            break;
        }
    }
    return str;
}

"if you want to handle long strings exceptionally fast in all browsers".

References

• blog.stevenlevithan.com -- Faster JavaScript Trim