String Trimming

Q: How can I trim a string, such as

in order to remove leading and trailing spaces?

A: Bobby Treat (drbob@bigfoot.com) writes: One way is to use Characters and StringJoin.

Brian Higgins (bghiggins@ucdavis.edu) writes: Another way to achieve your goal is to use the trim method in Java via J/Link.

At www.higgins.ucdavis.edu/Jlink.php there are various examples of integrating Java with Mathematica, including one that makes use of the Java regex (regular expressions) package that is useful for more complicated string manipulations.

In Mathematica 5.1, you also have the ability to work with regular expressions or use StringReplace. This trims white space off ends of strings.