How do you strip leading spaces in Oracle?

Question

I need to strip leading spaces from a column in Oracle. I've Googled but haven't found any answers except to write my own function which I'd like to avoid.

What's the easiest way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

use the trim function removes all specified characters either from the beginning or the ending of a string.

trim( [ leading | trailing | both  [ trim_character ]  ]   string1 )

Answer 2

You can user LTRIM Oracle function:

SQL> select ltrim(' hello world') from dual;

LTRIM('HELLOWORLD')
-------------------
hello world

For ending spaces you can use RTRIM. And for more options check out TRIM.

Answer 3

UPDATE table SET field = TRIM(field);