How to Remove Whitespace from String in Javascript?

Introduction

In a string, space separates the words to make it a meaningful sentence, and whitespace is just unnecessary space. It can be in front, back, or both in a string.

Whenever we have to make sure that our string doesn't contain any whitespaces in front or rear part, we used to trim string in javascript to remove leading and trailing whitespaces.

To trim a string in javascript we have to invoke the trim() method on the string as shown below. It returns a new string with no whitespaces.

An example of using trim() method:

Output:

Explanation:

• Above, we have a variable myStr and we have applied the trim() method on it.
• The trim method returns the trimmed string "This is my string" after removing leading and trailing whitespaces.

Syntax of trim in Javascript

Syntax of the trim method-

Return value of trim in Javascript

The trim() method looks for whitespace in the front and rear part of string and then returns the new trimmed string after removing leading and trailing whitespaces. Let's understand it by an example:

Output:

Explanation:

• Above, we have a variable testStr holding a string value and we are calling the trim() method on it, as result, trim() method looks for whitespaces in the front and the rear part of the string and returns the new trimmed string.
• The Time and Space complexities of the trim() method is O(N) where N is the size of the string. It is because in the worst case, the whole string can contain only whitespaces leading to traversal of the whole string.
• Next, we assigned the value returned by trim() method in returnVal variable then log returnVal on console, as result, we print the trimmed string on the console. This verifies, calling trim method on string having whitespace, returns the new trimmed string after removing leading and trailing whitespaces.

Now, that we know how the trim method works, let's take some more examples to understand the different scenarios of using it.

Examples of trim in Javascript

1. To remove the whitespace from the beginning of the string:

Output:

2. To remove the whitespace from the end of the string-

Output:

3. To remove the whitespace from both the beginning and end-

Output:

Browser compatibility

trim is a method to trim string in javascript, it is a feature of ES5(ECMAScript 5) which is supported in all major browsers.