Re: left-trim and right-trim for strings

[Klaus Berndl]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2002, maierh@myself.com wrote:

>  
>  "Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com>"
>  <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:
>  
> > How ironic.  You used `split-string' just where `string-match' makes
> > more sense and then use `string-match' where `split-string' is just what
> > you need:
>  
> > Why not
> >
> >    (if (string-match "\\`[\n\t ]+" str) (substring str (match-end 0)) str)
> >    ?
> > or
> >    (if (string-match "\\`[\n\t ]*" str) (substring str (match-end 0))) ?
> >
>  
>  Since emacs-21 we have too `replace-regexp-in-string'. Personally, I
>  like it very much.
>  
>  ,----
>  | (replace-regexp-in-string "^ *" "" "  This is a string.  ")
>  `----

Eureka! Yes, indeed, this is the one and only solution. It can be used for
left- right- and middle-trim without any if etc...Great.

But why are such trimming functions not included in the elisp-library? IMHO
they would be very useful for elisp-programmers?!

Klaus

P.S.
Nevertheless Stefans adjudgement about my first using of string-match and
split-string is correct ;-)


-- 
Klaus Berndl                    mailto: klaus.berndl@sdm.de
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