SQL Server LTRIM Function

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the SQL Server LTRIM() function to remove leading blanks from a string.

SQL Server LTRIM() function overview #

The LTRIM() function returns a string after removing leading blanks. The following shows the syntax of the LTRIM() function:

LTRIM(input_string)
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

In this syntax, the input string is an expression of character or binary data. It can be a literal string, variable, or column.

The input_string must evaluate to a value of a data type, except for TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE, that can be implicitly convertible to VARCHAR.

Otherwise, you must use the CAST() function to convert it to a character string explicitly.

SQL Server LTRIM() function examples #

Let’s take some examples of using the LTRIM() function.

A) Using LTRIM() function with literal strings #

This example uses the LTRIM() function to remove leading blanks of the string ' SQL Server LTRIM function':

SELECT 
    LTRIM('   SQL Server LTRIM Function') result;
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Here is the output:

result
----------------------------
SQL Server LTRIM Function

(1 row affected)Code language: PHP (php)

B) Using LTRIM() function to clean up spaces #

The following example uses LTRIM() function to remove the leading blank after splitting the strings into substrings:

SELECT 
    LTRIM(value) part
FROM 
    STRING_SPLIT('Doe, John', ',');
Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Here is the output:

part
---------
Doe
John

(2 rows affected)

Note that if you don’t use the LTRIM() function, the second row will have a leading space.

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use the SQL Server LTRIM() function to remove the leading blanks from a string.