trim

Removes leading and trailing characters from a string.

Syntax

trim( <expr> [, <chars> ] )

Arguments

<expr>

The string expression to be trimmed.

<chars> (named) (optional)

One or more characters to remove from the left and right side of <expr>.

The default value is " \t\n\r" (common whitespace characters).

Returns

This function returns a value of string data type or NULL. If either argument is NULL, returns NULL.

Examples

Remove leading and trailing * and - characters from a string:

SELECT
    '*-*ABC-*-' AS original,
    trim('*-*ABC-*-', '*-') AS trimmed;

+-----------+---------+
| original  | trimmed |
+-----------+---------+
| *-*ABC-*- | ABC     |
+-----------+---------+