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

Question

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 wit

Answer 1

Here's a solution similar to @adam-rosenfields in-place modification routine but without needlessly resorting to strlen(). Like @jkramer, the string is left-adjusted within the buffer so you can free the same pointer. Not optimal for large strings since it does not use memmove. Includes the ++/-- operators that @jfm3 mentions. FCTX-based unit tests included.

#include 

void trim(char * const a)
{
    char *p = a, *q = a;
    while (isspace(*q))            ++q;
    while (*q)                     *p++ = *q++;
    *p = '\0';
    while (p > a && isspace(*--p)) *p = '\0';
}

/* See http://fctx.wildbearsoftware.com/ */
#include "fct.h"

FCT_BGN()
{
    FCT_QTEST_BGN(trim)
    {
        { char s[] = "";      trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "   ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "\t";    trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("",    s); } // Trivial
        { char s[] = "a";     trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // NOP
        { char s[] = "abc";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("abc", s); } // NOP
        { char s[] = "  a";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Leading
        { char s[] = "  a c"; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Leading
        { char s[] = "a  ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Trailing
        { char s[] = "a c  "; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Trailing
        { char s[] = " a ";   trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a",   s); } // Both
        { char s[] = " a c "; trim(s); fct_chk_eq_str("a c", s); } // Both

        // Villemoes pointed out an edge case that corrupted memory.  Thank you.
        // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/122616/#comment23332594_4505533
        {
          char s[] = "a     ";       // Buffer with whitespace before s + 2
          trim(s + 2);               // Trim "    " containing only whitespace
          fct_chk_eq_str("", s + 2); // Ensure correct result from the trim
          fct_chk_eq_str("a ", s);   // Ensure preceding buffer not mutated
        }

        // doukremt suggested I investigate this test case but
        // did not indicate the specific behavior that was objectionable.
        // http://stackoverflow.com/posts/comments/33571430
        {
          char s[] = "         foobar";  // Shifted across whitespace
          trim(s);                       // Trim
          fct_chk_eq_str("foobar", s);   // Leading string is correct

          // Here is what the algorithm produces:
          char r[16] = { 'f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r', '\0', ' ',                     
                         ' ', 'f', 'o', 'o', 'b', 'a', 'r', '\0'};
          fct_chk_eq_int(0, memcmp(s, r, sizeof(s)));
        }
    }
    FCT_QTEST_END();
}
FCT_END();