Problem
A string is preceded and followed by a number of same characters but trim() only trim off spaces
Solution
Use regular expression to trim off the unwanted characters
Detailed explanation
Suppose during processing, you have a string ended up with being like this:
-----------here is my text-----
Or you have a list and for whatever reason, you remove the items but have the commas left over like this:
,,,,,,,,,,,,,item1,item2,item3,,,,
And you want to trim off those dashes or commas. Trim() does not work here as it only trims off spaces, but luckily regular expressions come for a rescue. We can use regexp to remove all the starting and trailing dashes:
<cfset str = reReplace(result, "^(\-)+|(\-)+$", "", "ALL")>
And here is a UDF for reusability:
<cffunction name="trimChar" access="public" returntype="string" hint="" output="false">
<cfargument name="str" type="string" required="yes" hint="The text to be trimmed">
<cfargument name="char" type="string" required="yes" hint="The char(s) to be trimmed">
<cfset var result = "">
<cfset var c = "">
<cfset var i = "">
<cfset var size = len(arguments.char)>
<cfset result = arguments.str>
<!--- Trim off every character, one by one --->
<cfloop from="1" to="#size#" index="i">
<cfset c = mid(arguments.char, i, 1)>
<cfset result = reReplace(result, "^(\#c#)+|(\#c#)+$", "", "ALL")>
</cfloop>
<cfreturn result>
</cffunction>
I added in one more feature in this UDF that allows user to pass in multiple characters. For example, for this string:
((((((((here is my text)))))
They can pass in both parentheses to trim both of them off:
<cfset str = trimChar(str, "()")>
+
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