Way to get rid of ending spaces in SQL? - Tilted Forum Project - TFP - Sexuality, Philosophy and Political Discussion

sailor · 12-06-2004, 06:33 PM

I have a mySQL database I am working with that came from an Excel spreadsheet (export to CSV, import with phpMyAdmin). However, when this was done, most of the fields have long strings of spaces at the end of them. Is there any way to get rid of this? Im working with PHP--if someone could suggest a quick PHP script that would run through and chomp the spaces off the end of every cell, Id be most thankful.

Rawb · 12-06-2004, 07:02 PM

what you are looking for is either trim, ltrim or rtrim

Look those up in the PHP manual, and you can figure out exactly what you want to do with them.

But you are basically going to have to do a bunch of database reads, and then a bunch of updates. So, no easy way I know of to do this automatically in phpMyAdmin.

sailor · 12-06-2004, 08:20 PM

Awesome, thats exactly what I was looking for. I just wrote a quick script to go through everything and run it through the rtrim() function. Thanks!

devnull · 12-10-2004, 08:10 AM

for future reference, the trim() function strips them from both sides at the same time.

sailor · 12-10-2004, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by devnull

for future reference, the trim() function strips them from both sides at the same time.

Thanks. I saw that listed with rtrim() but the spaces came from the CSV file and were all on the right side of the string. I guess I probably should have done trim() anyways--not gonna hurt and woulda made sure...

12-06-2004, 06:33 PM	#1 (permalink)
sailor beauty in the breakdown Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Chapel Hill, NC	Way to get rid of ending spaces in SQL? I have a mySQL database I am working with that came from an Excel spreadsheet (export to CSV, import with phpMyAdmin). However, when this was done, most of the fields have long strings of spaces at the end of them. Is there any way to get rid of this? Im working with PHP--if someone could suggest a quick PHP script that would run through and chomp the spaces off the end of every cell, Id be most thankful. __________________ "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato

12-06-2004, 08:20 PM	#3 (permalink)
sailor beauty in the breakdown Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Chapel Hill, NC	Awesome, thats exactly what I was looking for. I just wrote a quick script to go through everything and run it through the rtrim() function. Thanks! __________________ "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato

12-06-2004, 07:02 PM	#2 (permalink)
Rawb Crazy Join Date: May 2003 Location: Salt Town, UT	what you are looking for is either trim, ltrim or rtrim Look those up in the PHP manual, and you can figure out exactly what you want to do with them. But you are basically going to have to do a bunch of database reads, and then a bunch of updates. So, no easy way I know of to do this automatically in phpMyAdmin.

12-10-2004, 08:10 AM	#4 (permalink)
devnull Crazy Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Bit Bucket	for future reference, the trim() function strips them from both sides at the same time.