How to remove space around a character?

Question

Say I have the following string:

s := 'This , is,       the Delphi  ,    World!';

I would like the following output:

Result := 'This,is,the Delphi,World!';

Basically I need a routine that strips ALL occurrences of spaces ONLY if they appears before or after the comma char (which is my delimiter), leaving intact spaces between other words.

Any help is much appreciated.

What do you think of this solution?

function RemoveSpacesAroundDelimiter(var aString: string; aDelimiter:
    string): string;
begin
  while AnsiContainsText(aString, aDelimiter + ' ') do
    begin
    aString := StringReplace(aString, ', ', aDelimiter, [rfReplaceAll, rfIgnoreCase]);
    end;

  while AnsiContainsText(aString, ' ' + aDelimiter) do
    begin
    aString := StringReplace(aString, ' ' + aDelimiter, aDelimiter, [rfReplaceAll, rfIgnoreCase]);
    end;

  Result := aString;
end;

thanks

fabio

Answer 1

Sounds like a task for TStringList.

function UltraTrim(Value: string): string;
var
  sl: TStringList;
  i: Integer;
begin
  sl := TStringList.Create;
  try
    // Prevent the stringlist from using spaces as delimiters too.
    sl.StrictDelimiter := True;

    // Set the comma separated text.
    sl.CommaText := Value;

    // Trim each item.
    for i := 0 to sl.Count -1 do
      sl[i] := Trim(sl[i]);

    // Concat back to comma separated string.
    Result := sl.CommaText;
  finally
    sl.Free;
  end;

end;