perl: trim()

A trim() function should be native to perl, but since it isn’t, this will have to do.

sub trim {
    my @vals=@_;
    for (@vals) {
        s/^s+//;
        s/s+$//;
    }
    return wantarray ? @vals : $vals[0];
}

Notice that I wrote the code to process either a scalar or an array. If the variable that you’re storing the return value from the function is a scalar, then it returns a scalar. If the variable that you’re storing the return value is an array, then it will return an array. This provides a kind of pseudo-polymorphism and makes the function more flexible.

When you call the function, you can pass either a scalar or an array, although in perl, it will send the values as an array anyway. That’s why I’m processing ‘@_‘. You don’t need to worry about this in order to use the function, but if you want to get good at perl, then you should understand what’s going on.

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