{"id":5260,"date":"2013-04-12T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T00:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craftydba.com\/?p=5260"},"modified":"2017-10-11T16:15:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T16:15:10","slug":"string-functions-ltrim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/?p=5260","title":{"rendered":"String Functions &#8211; LTRIM()"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/turquoise-yarn-md.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-5158\" title=\"turquoise-yarn-md\" src=\"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/turquoise-yarn-md-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI am going to continue my series of very short articles or tidbits on Transaction SQL string functions. I will exploring the LTRIM() function today.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/ms177827.aspx\">LTRIM()<\/a> function takes a source string as input and returns a output string with all leading spaces removed.<\/p>\n<p>The following example removes leading spaces from a favorite movie title of mine.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:TSQL theme:familiar mark:1,2-3\" title=\"string functions - ltrim()\">\r\n-- Remove leading spaces\r\nselect ltrim('    WIZARD OF OZ') as str_phrase\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:TSQL theme:epicgeeks\" title=\"output\">\r\noutput: \r\n\r\nstr_phrase\r\n------------\r\nWIZARD OF OZ\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n<p>One thing to always worry about when using TSQL functions is how will it react with empty strings or NULL values?  Both empty strings and NULL values as input return themselves as output.  <\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:TSQL theme:familiar mark:1,2-3\" title=\"string functions - ltrim()\">\r\n-- Empty string returns empty string\r\nselect ltrim('') as str_phrase\r\n\r\n-- Null returns Null\r\nselect ltrim(NULL) as str_phrase\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:TSQL theme:epicgeeks\" title=\"output\">\r\noutput: \r\n\r\nstr_phrase\r\n----------\r\n\r\nstr_phrase\r\n----------\r\nNULL\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/p>\n<p>Next time, I will be exploring the <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/library\/ms182673.aspx\">NCHAR()<\/a> function.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am going to continue my series of very short articles or tidbits on Transaction SQL string functions. I will exploring the LTRIM() function today. The LTRIM() function takes a source string as input and returns a output string with all leading spaces removed. The following example removes leading spaces from a favorite movie title of mine. &#8212; Remove leading spaces select ltrim(&#8216; WIZARD OF OZ&#8217;) as str_phrase output: str_phrase &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; WIZARD OF OZ One thing to always worry about when using TSQL functions is how will it react with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[31,15,822,815,29],"class_list":["post-5260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-very-short-articles","tag-database-developer","tag-john-f-miner-iii","tag-ltrim","tag-string-function","tag-tsql"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craftydba.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}