How to remove leading and/or trailing spaces of a string in T-SQL Database: MS SQL Server Operators: TRIM FROM LTRIM RTRIM Problem: You’d like to remove a spaces or a specific characters from the beginning and end of a string. Example: Our database has a table named company with data in two columns: id and name. idname 1' Super Market ' 2'Green shop ' 3' Modern Bookshop' Let’s trim the name of each company to remove the unnecessary space at the beginning and end. Solution: We’ll use the TRIM function. Here’s the query you would write: SELECT TRIM(' ' FROM name) AS new_name FROM company; Alternatively, you can use the shorter version without the FROM keyword and space as characters to remove; by default, TRIM will treat this as removing spaces from a string stored in a given column or expression in argument of TRIM function. SELECT TRIM(name) AS new_name FROM company; Here’s the result of both queries: new_name 'Super Market' 'Green shop' 'Modern Bookshop' Discussion: Use the TRIM function if you want to trim a string in a table. This function allows you to remove a specific character from the beginning and end of a string. This function takes the following arguments: The character you want to trim from the string, by default it is a space.. The FROM keyword, followed by the name of the string column to be trimmed. In our example, that looks like: TRIM(' ' FROM name) T-SQL allows also remove space of another characters only from the beginning or only from end of a string. The example below removes the space at the end of each company by using RTRIM() function. SELECT RTRIM(name) AS new_name FROM company; new_name ' Super Market' 'Green shop' ' Modern Bookshop' But could just as well be used to trim the space at the beginning if you use the LTRIM function instead: SELECT LTRIM(name) AS new_name FROM company; The query returns the name column without a space at the end. Notice that the spaces at the beginning are left untouched. new_name 'Super Market ' 'Green shop ' 'Modern Bookshop' Recommended courses: SQL Basics in SQL Server SQL Practice Set Common Functions in SQL Server Recommended articles: 5 SQL Functions for Manipulating Strings 18 Useful Important SQL Functions to Learn ASAP See also: How to Replace Part of a String in SQL How to Trim Strings in SQL Subscribe to our newsletter Join our monthly newsletter to be notified about the latest posts. Email address How Do You Write a SELECT Statement in SQL? What Is a Foreign Key in SQL? Enumerate and Explain All the Basic Elements of an SQL Query