How to remove tabs at start and end of varchar field in MySQL?

Question

I've got a field in a mysql db that's a varchar(255). I've looked at trim() to remove leading and trailing whitespace, but it seems to only handle spaces, not tab characters:

 UPDATE mytable SET textfield = TRIM(textfield);

Does anyone know how to also strip tabs off the start and end of a field?

Answer 1

You can still use the TRIM function, and specify the character to be trimmed:

UPDATE mytable SET email = TRIM(CHAR(9) FROM TRIM(email));