strtrim#

Purpose#

Strips all white space characters from the left and right side of each element in a string array.

Format#

y = strtrim(sa)#

Parameters:: sa (NxM string array) – data
Returns:: y (NxM string array) – contains contents of sa with all white space characters trimmed from left and right side of each element.

Examples#

Basic example#

// Create a string with leading and trailing spaces
str = "   Time Series Estimation   ";

// Remove leading and trailing spaces from string
str_mod = strtrim(str);

After the code above, str should contain:

Time Series Estimation

while str_mod should contain the same characters, but have all spaces on the right and left removed:

Time Series Estimation

Create a string array of variable names#

strtrim() can be useful when parsing tokens from a text file. For example, you may read the header row of a CSV file, containing something like the header_vars variable in the example below and want to create a string array in which each variable name is an element in the string array.

// Create string similar to a messy header row
header_vars = "alpha, beta, gamma";

// Split string into 3x1 string array at comma locations//(notice the transpose operator ' at the end of the statement
header_sa = strsplit(header_vars, ",")';

After the above code, header_sa will equal:

alpha
 beta
gamma

Note

the print function will automatically align the string array, so print header_sa will make it appear as if the leading and trailing spaces are gone. To see the spaces, you will need to print individual elements i.e. print header_sa[1]; print header_sa[2];, etc)

You can remove the leading and trailing spaces with strtrim(), like this:

// Remove leading and trailing spaces
header_sa = strtrim(header_sa);

Which will transform header_sa into:

alpha
beta
gamma

Source#

strfns.src