How do I trim leading/trailing whitespace in a sta

Question

Is there a clean, preferably standard method of trimming leading and trailing whitespace from a string in C? I'd roll my own, but I would think this is a common problem with an equally common solution.

Answer 1

I'm not sure what you consider "painless."

C strings are pretty painful. We can find the first non-whitespace character position trivially:

while (isspace(* p)) p++;

We can find the last non-whitespace character position with two similar trivial moves:

while (* q) q++;
do { q--; } while (isspace(* q));

(I have spared you the pain of using the * and ++ operators at the same time.)

The question now is what do you do with this? The datatype at hand isn't really a big robust abstract String that is easy to think about, but instead really barely any more than an array of storage bytes. Lacking a robust data type, it is impossible to write a function that will do the same as PHperytonby's chomp function. What would such a function in C return?

Answer 2

What do you think about using StrTrim function defined in header Shlwapi.h.? It is straight forward rather defining on your own.
Details can be found on:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb773454(v=vs.85).aspx

If you have
char ausCaptain[]="GeorgeBailey ";
StrTrim(ausCaptain," ");
This will give ausCaptain as "GeorgeBailey" not "GeorgeBailey ".

Answer 3

s was so extremely helpful, I wanted to say I was glad this post was available and to show what I was able to do with the examples. I needed to tokenize a larger string, and then take the substring(s) and find the last one - so I could remove a newline from fgets() call, and also remove the whitespace from the front of that token -- so I could easily compare it with a static string. The first example in the post above got me there, so thank you. Here is how I used the code samples and the output I got.

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
   FILE * fp;   // test file
   char currDBSStatstr[100] = {"/0"};
   char *beg;
   char *end;
   char *str1;
   char str[] = "Initializing DBS Configuration";
   fp = fopen("file2-1.txt","r");
   if (fp != NULL)
   {
      printf("File exists.\n");
      fgets(currDBSStatstr, sizeof(currDBSStatstr), fp);
   }
   else
   {
      printf("Error.\n");
      exit(2);
   }  
   //print string
   printf("String: %s\n", currDBSStatstr);
   //extract first string
   str1 = strtok(currDBSStatstr, ":-");
   //print first token
   printf("%s\n", str1);
   //get more tokens in sequence
   while(1)
   {
      //extract more tokens in sequence
      str1 = strtok(NULL, ":-");
      //check to see if done
      if (str1 == NULL)
      {
         printf("Tokenizing Done.\n");
         exit(0);
      }
      //print string after tokenizing Done
      printf("%s\n", str1);
      end = str1 + strlen(str1) - 1;
      while((end > str1) && (*end == '\n'))
      {
         end--;
         *(end+1) = 0;
         beg = str1;
         while(isspace(*str1))
            str1++;
      }
      printf("%s\n", str1);
      if (strcmp(str, str1) == 0)
         printf("Strings are equal.\n");
   }
   return 0;

}

Output

File exists.

String: DBS State: DBS Startup - Initializing DBS Configuration

DBS State

DBS Startup

DBS Startup

Initializing DBS Configuration

Initializing DBS Configuration

Strings are equal.

Tokenizing Done.

Answer 4

char* strtrim(char* const str)
{
    if (str != nullptr)
    {
        char const* begin{ str };
        while (std::isspace(*begin))
        {
            ++begin;
        }

        auto end{ begin };
        auto scout{ begin };
        while (*scout != '\0')
        {
            if (!std::isspace(*scout++))
            {
                end = scout;
            }
        }

        auto /* std::ptrdiff_t */ const length{ end - begin };
        if (begin != str)
        {
            std::memmove(str, begin, length);
        }

        str[length] = '\0';
    }

    return str;
}

Answer 5

Here's a solution similar to @adam-rosenfields in-place modification routine but without needlessly resorting to strlen(). Like @jkramer, the string is left-adjusted within the buffer so you can free the same pointer. Not optimal for large strings since it does not use memmove. Includes the ++/-- operators that @jfm3 mentions. FCTX-based unit tests included.

#include <ctype.h>

void trim(char * const a)
{
    char *p = a, *q = a;
    while (isspace(*q))            ++q;
    while (*q)                     *p++ = *q++;
    *p = '\0';
    while (p > a && isspace(*--p)) *p = '\0';
}

/* See http://fctx.wildbearsoftware.com/ */
#include "fct.h"

FCT_BGN()
{
    FCT_QTEST_BGN(trim)
    {
        { char s[] = "";      trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "   ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "\t";    trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "a";     trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // NOP
        { char s[] = "abc";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("abc", s); } // NOP
        { char s[] = "  a";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Leading
        { char s[] = "  a c"; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Leading
        { char s[] = "a  ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Trailing
        { char s[] = "a c  "; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Trailing
        { char s[] = " a ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Both
        { char s[] = " a c "; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Both

        // Villemoes pointed out an edge case that corrupted memory.  Thank you.
        // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/122616/#comment23332594_4505533
        {
          char s[] = "a     ";       // Buffer with whitespace before s + 2
          trim(s + 2);               // Trim "    " containing only whitespace
          fct_chk_eq_str("", s + 2); // Ensure correct result from the trim
          fct_chk_eq_str("a ", s);   // Ensure preceding buffer not mutated
        }

        // doukremt suggested I investigate this test case but
        // did not indicate the specific behavior that was objectionable.
        // http://stackoverflow.com/posts/comments/33571430
        {
          char s[] = "         foobar";  // Shifted across whitespace
          trim(s);                       // Trim
          fct_chk_eq_str("foobar", s);   // Leading string is correct

          // Here is what the algorithm produces:
          char r[16] = { 'f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r', '\0', ' ',                     
                         ' ', 'f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r', '\0'};
          fct_chk_eq_int(0, memcmp(s, r, sizeof(s)));
        }
    }
    FCT_QTEST_END();
}
FCT_END();

Answer 6

Late to the trim party

Features:
1. Trim the beginning quickly, as in a number of other answers.
2. After going to the end, trimming the right with only 1 test per loop. Like @jfm3, but works for an all white-space string)
3. To avoid undefined behavior when char is a signed char, cast *s to unsigned char.

Character handling "In all cases the argument is an int, the value of which shall be representable as an unsigned char or shall equal the value of the macro EOF. If the argument has any other value, the behavior is undefined." C11 §7.4 1

#include <ctype.h>

// Return a pointer to the trimmed string
char *string_trim_inplace(char *s) {
  while (isspace((unsigned char) *s)) s++;
  if (*s) {
    char *p = s;
    while (*p) p++;
    while (isspace((unsigned char) *(--p)));
    p[1] = '\0';
  }

  // If desire to shift the trimmed string

  return s;
}

---

@chqrlie commented the above does not shift the trimmed string. To do so....

// Return a pointer to the (shifted) trimmed string
char *string_trim_inplace(char *s) {
  char *original = s;
  size_t len = 0;

  while (isspace((unsigned char) *s)) {
    s++;
  } 
  if (*s) {
    char *p = s;
    while (*p) p++;
    while (isspace((unsigned char) *(--p)));
    p[1] = '\0';
    len = (size_t) (p - s);
  }

  return (s == original) ? s : memove(original, s, len + 1);
}