How to remove the very first empty space at the start of a string?

Question

I have a string like:

" United States" and I'd like it to be "United States"

I use the following to replace the string for other reasons but I cannot figure out how to tell it to only remove the first empty space:

$title = usp_get_meta(false, 'usp-custom-8');
update_post_meta( $post->ID, 'usp-custom-8', str_replace('n Argentinan', 'Argentina', $title ));

I know I could use something like $str = ltrim($str); but I am not sure how to put it there and I don't want to risk to run the loop and create a disaster as it will go through my whole db.

In theory I could also run it in another bit of code that I have:

        $stateList = usp_get_meta(false, 'usp-custom-8');
        $stateList = ltrim($stateList);
        $stateList = explode(',', $stateList);
        foreach($stateList as $state) {
          array_push($countries, $state);
        }

But I get Array as a value. when using ltrim there.

So either I make it run a loop as the first example or that last piece of code, yet how can I remove the first empty space from the string?

Answer 1

I'm not entirely sure of what you're trying to do, but in theory you can use array_map() with the ltrim() function, or even trim(), as argument after exploding $stateList, i.e. (untested):

$stateList = array_map("ltrim",  explode(',', $stateList));
# loop...

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1. explode() - Split a string by a string arrays
2. array_map() - Applies the callback to the elements of the given arrays
3. ltrim() - Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning of a string
4. trim() - Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string