Thomas Kellerer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > Hi, > > I have a column with the datatype "text" that may contain leading > whitespace (tabs, spaces newlines, ...) and I would like to remove them all > (ideally leading and trailing).
You can use trim() for that: select 'x' || trim(both '\t' from trim(both ' ' from ' \t\tfoo bar ')) || 'x'; (for testing with 'x' around the result) > > I tried > > SELECT regexp_replace(myfield, '\A\s*', '') > FROM mytable; For regexp_replace() you need an extra parameter 'g' like below: test=*# select 'x' || regexp_replace(regexp_replace(' \t\tfoo bar ', '^[ \t]+','','g'),'[ \t]+$','','g') || 'x'; ^^^ ^^^ Andreas -- Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect. (Linus Torvalds) "If I was god, I would recompile penguin with --enable-fly." (unknow) Kaufbach, Saxony, Germany, Europe. N 51.05082°, E 13.56889° ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org