Remove all line breaks at the beginning of a string in Swift

Question

I have a string like this:

"

BLA
Blub"

Now I would like to remove all leading line breaks. (But only the ones until the first "real word" appears. How is this possible?

Thanks

Martin R · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-12T08:01:04.627

70

If it is acceptable that newline (and other whitespace) characters are removed from both ends of the string then you can use

let string = "\n\nBLA\nblub"
let trimmed = string.stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet())
// In Swift 1.2 (Xcode 6.3):
let trimmed = (string as NSString).stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet())

To remove leading newline/whitespace characters only you can (for example) use a regular expression search and replace:

let trimmed = string.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("^\\s*",
    withString: "", options: .RegularExpressionSearch)

"^\\s*" matches all whitespace at the beginning of the string. Use "^\\n*" to match newline characters only.

Update for Swift 3 (Xcode 8):

let trimmed = string.replacingOccurrences(of: "^\\s*", with: "", options: .regularExpression)

edited Sep 12 '16 at 08:01

answered Mar 10 '15 at 08:11

Martin R

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Swift 3 syntax: `string.replacingOccurrences(of: "^\\s*", with: "", options: .regularExpression, range: nil)` – David L Sep 12 '16 at 00:05
@DavidL: Thanks – updated. (The `range:` argument is optional and can be omitted.) – Martin R Sep 12 '16 at 08:01
@ConfusionTowers This will also trim trailing line breaks and leading and trailing spaces. – famfamfam Mar 10 '21 at 01:39
@famfamfam That's correct, as in the case of the first line of Martin's answer. – ConfusionTowers Mar 10 '21 at 20:08

score 19 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 15 '18 at 04:37

19

You can use extension for Trim

Ex.

let string = "\n\nBLA\nblub"
let trimmed = string.trim()

extension String {
    func trim() -> String {
          return self.trimmingCharacters(in: CharacterSet.whitespacesAndNewlines)
    }
}

edited Jun 15 '18 at 04:37

Jack

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answered Dec 29 '16 at 11:43

Jignesh Chanchiya

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This will also trim trailing line breaks and leading and trailing spaces. – Binarian Jun 12 '19 at 13:59

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 05 '22 at 23:38

The trimming function wasn't working for me but this works. I am just replacing the next line "\n" with a blank space

func removeNextLineString(name: String) -> String{
    var newName = name
    newName = newName.replacingOccurrences(of: "\n", with: " ")
    
    return newName
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 28 '23 at 02:00

This will remove all leading new lines (carriage returns)

extension String {
    func trimLeadingNewLines() -> String {
        guard let firstIndex = indices.first, let lastIndex = indices.last else { return self }
        let firstCharIndex = self.firstIndex(where: { !$0.isNewline }) ?? firstIndex
        return String(self[firstCharIndex ... lastIndex])
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 09 '23 at 17:08

Swift 5 / Xcode 14.2:

extension String {
    func removeNewLines(_ delimiter: String = "") -> String {
        self.replacingOccurrences(of: "\n", with: delimiter)
    }
}

Usage:

let string = "Hello World\nHello World"
print(string)
/*
Prints
Hello World
Hello World
*/
print(string.removeNewLines())
/*
Prints
Hello WorldHello World
*/

print(string.removeNewLines(" "))
/*
Prints
Hello World Hello World
*/

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 01 '23 at 12:57

0

###Swift 5.5

let trimmed = content.trimmingCharacters(in: NSCharacterSet.whitespacesAndNewlines)

answered Mar 01 '23 at 12:57

Ramis

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Remove all line breaks at the beginning of a string in Swift

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