Re: string-strip

[Lars Hansen]

Richard Stallman wrote:

>    > 3. Return nil when resulting string is empty.
>
>That would be a bad idea.
>  
>
Ok. Then what about

(defun string-strip (str)
  "Return a copy of STR with leading and trailing white space removed."
  (save-match-data
    (string-match
"\\`[[:space:]\n]*\\(\\(?:.\\|\n\\)*?\\)[[:space:]\n]*\\'" str)
    (match-string 1 str)))

(string-strip " foo ")      => "foo"
(string-strip " \nfoo\n ")  => "foo"
(string-strip " foo\nbar ") => "foo\nbar"
(string-strip " ")          => ""
(string-strip " \n ")       => ""