How do I trim leading/trailing whitespace in a standard way?

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.

Solution 1:

If you can modify the string:

// Note: This function returns a pointer to a substring of the original string.
// If the given string was allocated dynamically, the caller must not overwrite
// that pointer with the returned value, since the original pointer must be
// deallocated using the same allocator with which it was allocated.  The return
// value must NOT be deallocated using free() etc.
char *trimwhitespace(char *str)
{
  char *end;

  // Trim leading space
  while(isspace((unsigned char)*str)) str++;

  if(*str == 0)  // All spaces?
    return str;

  // Trim trailing space
  end = str + strlen(str) - 1;
  while(end > str && isspace((unsigned char)*end)) end--;

  // Write new null terminator character
  end[1] = '\0';

  return str;
}

If you can't modify the string, then you can use basically the same method:

// Stores the trimmed input string into the given output buffer, which must be
// large enough to store the result.  If it is too small, the output is
// truncated.
size_t trimwhitespace(char *out, size_t len, const char *str)
{
  if(len == 0)
    return 0;

  const char *end;
  size_t out_size;

  // Trim leading space
  while(isspace((unsigned char)*str)) str++;

  if(*str == 0)  // All spaces?
  {
    *out = 0;
    return 1;
  }

  // Trim trailing space
  end = str + strlen(str) - 1;
  while(end > str && isspace((unsigned char)*end)) end--;
  end++;

  // Set output size to minimum of trimmed string length and buffer size minus 1
  out_size = (end - str) < len-1 ? (end - str) : len-1;

  // Copy trimmed string and add null terminator
  memcpy(out, str, out_size);
  out[out_size] = 0;

  return out_size;
}

Solution 2:

Here's one that shifts the string into the first position of your buffer. You might want this behavior so that if you dynamically allocated the string, you can still free it on the same pointer that trim() returns:

char *trim(char *str)
{
    size_t len = 0;
    char *frontp = str;
    char *endp = NULL;

    if( str == NULL ) { return NULL; }
    if( str[0] == '\0' ) { return str; }

    len = strlen(str);
    endp = str + len;

    /* Move the front and back pointers to address the first non-whitespace
     * characters from each end.
     */
    while( isspace((unsigned char) *frontp) ) { ++frontp; }
    if( endp != frontp )
    {
        while( isspace((unsigned char) *(--endp)) && endp != frontp ) {}
    }

    if( frontp != str && endp == frontp )
            *str = '\0';
    else if( str + len - 1 != endp )
            *(endp + 1) = '\0';

    /* Shift the string so that it starts at str so that if it's dynamically
     * allocated, we can still free it on the returned pointer.  Note the reuse
     * of endp to mean the front of the string buffer now.
     */
    endp = str;
    if( frontp != str )
    {
            while( *frontp ) { *endp++ = *frontp++; }
            *endp = '\0';
    }

    return str;
}

Test for correctness:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>

/* Paste function from above here. */

int main()
{
    /* The test prints the following:
    [nothing to trim] -> [nothing to trim]
    [    trim the front] -> [trim the front]
    [trim the back     ] -> [trim the back]
    [    trim front and back     ] -> [trim front and back]
    [ trim one char front and back ] -> [trim one char front and back]
    [ trim one char front] -> [trim one char front]
    [trim one char back ] -> [trim one char back]
    [                   ] -> []
    [ ] -> []
    [a] -> [a]
    [] -> []
    */

    char *sample_strings[] =
    {
            "nothing to trim",
            "    trim the front",
            "trim the back     ",
            "    trim front and back     ",
            " trim one char front and back ",
            " trim one char front",
            "trim one char back ",
            "                   ",
            " ",
            "a",
            "",
            NULL
    };
    char test_buffer[64];
    char comparison_buffer[64];
    size_t index, compare_pos;

    for( index = 0; sample_strings[index] != NULL; ++index )
    {
        // Fill buffer with known value to verify we do not write past the end of the string.
        memset( test_buffer, 0xCC, sizeof(test_buffer) );
        strcpy( test_buffer, sample_strings[index] );
        memcpy( comparison_buffer, test_buffer, sizeof(comparison_buffer));

        printf("[%s] -> [%s]\n", sample_strings[index],
                                 trim(test_buffer));

        for( compare_pos = strlen(comparison_buffer);
             compare_pos < sizeof(comparison_buffer);
             ++compare_pos )
        {
            if( test_buffer[compare_pos] != comparison_buffer[compare_pos] )
            {
                printf("Unexpected change to buffer @ index %u: %02x (expected %02x)\n",
                    compare_pos, (unsigned char) test_buffer[compare_pos], (unsigned char) comparison_buffer[compare_pos]);
            }
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

Source file was trim.c. Compiled with 'cc -Wall trim.c -o trim'.