How do I remove white-space from the beginning of a string?

Question

How do I remove white-space from the beginning of a string in Java without removing from the end?

If the value is:

String temp = "    hi    "

Then how can I delete only the leading white-space so it looks like this:

String temp = "hi    "

The current implementation I have is to loop through, checking the first character and creating a substring until the first non-whitespace value is reached.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could use:

temp = temp.replaceFirst("^\\s*", "")

Answer 2

You could use Commons-lang StringUtils stripStart method.

If you pass null it will automatically trim the spaces.

StringUtils.stripStart(temp, null);

Answer 3

As of JDK11 you can use stripLeading:

String result = temp.stripLeading();