Question

How to Trim String in bash?

Hi all,

Is there an easy way to trim a string in bash?

For example if I wanted to trim a string with JS, I could simply do string.trim();.

However as far as I can see there is no such command in bash:

  1. trim

The output that I get is:

  1. trim: command not found

Any suggestions would be appreciated!


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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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April 16, 2020
Accepted Answer

Hello,

There are multiple ways to do this depending on what exactly you would like to achieve.

One of the most straight forward ways to trim a string in bash is to use the xargs command. Here’s a quick example:

echo "   some text here  " | xargs

You would get the following output:

some text here

Note that the spaces between the words are still there, only the initial and trailing spaces are removed.

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby

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