我将简单地使用sed:

function trim
{
    echo "$1" | sed -n '1h;1!H;${;g;s/^[ \t]*//g;s/[ \t]*$//g;p;}'
}

a)单行字符串使用示例

string='    wordA wordB  wordC   wordD    '
trimmed=$( trim "$string" )

echo "GIVEN STRING: |$string|"
echo "TRIMMED STRING: |$trimmed|"

输出:

GIVEN STRING: |    wordA wordB  wordC   wordD    |
TRIMMED STRING: |wordA wordB  wordC   wordD|

b)多行字符串使用示例

string='    wordA
   >wordB<
wordC    '
trimmed=$( trim "$string" )

echo -e "GIVEN STRING: |$string|\n"
echo "TRIMMED STRING: |$trimmed|"

输出:

GIVEN STRING: |    wordAA
   >wordB<
wordC    |

TRIMMED STRING: |wordAA
   >wordB<
wordC|

c)最后说明: 如果你不喜欢使用函数，对于单行字符串，你可以简单地使用“更容易记住”的命令，比如:

echo "$string" | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//' | sed -e 's/[ \t]*$//'

例子:

echo "   wordA wordB wordC   " | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//' | sed -e 's/[ \t]*$//'

输出:

wordA wordB wordC

在多行字符串上使用上述方法也可以，但请注意，它也会切断任何尾随/前导内部多行空间，就像GuruM在评论中注意到的那样

string='    wordAA
    >four spaces before<
 >one space before<    '
echo "$string" | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//' | sed -e 's/[ \t]*$//'

输出:

wordAA
>four spaces before<
>one space before<

所以如果你介意保留这些空格，请使用我回答开头的函数!

d)解释sed语法“find and replace”在函数trim中使用的多行字符串:

sed -n '
# If the first line, copy the pattern to the hold buffer
1h
# If not the first line, then append the pattern to the hold buffer
1!H
# If the last line then ...
$ {
    # Copy from the hold to the pattern buffer
    g
    # Do the search and replace
    s/^[ \t]*//g
    s/[ \t]*$//g
    # print
    p
}'

为了删除字符串开头和结尾的所有空格(包括行末字符):

echo $variable | xargs echo -n

这也将删除重复的空格:

echo "  this string has a lot       of spaces " | xargs echo -n

Produces: 'this string has a lot of spaces'

你可以使用tr删除换行符:

var=`hg st -R "$path" | tr -d '\n'`
if [ -n $var ]; then
    echo $var
done

# Strip leading and trailing white space (new line inclusive).
trim(){
    [[ "$1" =~ [^[:space:]](.*[^[:space:]])? ]]
    printf "%s" "$BASH_REMATCH"
}

OR

# Strip leading white space (new line inclusive).
ltrim(){
    [[ "$1" =~ [^[:space:]].* ]]
    printf "%s" "$BASH_REMATCH"
}

# Strip trailing white space (new line inclusive).
rtrim(){
    [[ "$1" =~ .*[^[:space:]] ]]
    printf "%s" "$BASH_REMATCH"
}

# Strip leading and trailing white space (new line inclusive).
trim(){
    printf "%s" "$(rtrim "$(ltrim "$1")")"
}

OR

# Strip leading and trailing specified characters.  ex: str=$(trim "$str" $'\n a')
trim(){
    if [ "$2" ]; then
        trim_chrs="$2"
    else
        trim_chrs="[:space:]"
    fi

    [[ "$1" =~ ^["$trim_chrs"]*(.*[^"$trim_chrs"])["$trim_chrs"]*$ ]]
    printf "%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
}

OR

# Strip leading specified characters.  ex: str=$(ltrim "$str" $'\n a')
ltrim(){
    if [ "$2" ]; then
        trim_chrs="$2"
    else
        trim_chrs="[:space:]"
    fi

    [[ "$1" =~ ^["$trim_chrs"]*(.*[^"$trim_chrs"]) ]]
    printf "%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
}

# Strip trailing specified characters.  ex: str=$(rtrim "$str" $'\n a')
rtrim(){
    if [ "$2" ]; then
        trim_chrs="$2"
    else
        trim_chrs="[:space:]"
    fi

    [[ "$1" =~ ^(.*[^"$trim_chrs"])["$trim_chrs"]*$ ]]
    printf "%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
}

# Strip leading and trailing specified characters.  ex: str=$(trim "$str" $'\n a')
trim(){
    printf "%s" "$(rtrim "$(ltrim "$1" "$2")" "$2")"
}

OR

建立在moskit的expr soulution…

# Strip leading and trailing white space (new line inclusive).
trim(){
    printf "%s" "`expr "$1" : "^[[:space:]]*\(.*[^[:space:]]\)[[:space:]]*$"`"
}

OR

# Strip leading white space (new line inclusive).
ltrim(){
    printf "%s" "`expr "$1" : "^[[:space:]]*\(.*[^[:space:]]\)"`"
}

# Strip trailing white space (new line inclusive).
rtrim(){
    printf "%s" "`expr "$1" : "^\(.*[^[:space:]]\)[[:space:]]*$"`"
}

# Strip leading and trailing white space (new line inclusive).
trim(){
    printf "%s" "$(rtrim "$(ltrim "$1")")"
}

我创建了以下函数。我不确定printf的可移植性如何，但这个解决方案的美妙之处在于，您可以通过添加更多字符代码来指定什么是“空白”。

    iswhitespace()
    {
        n=`printf "%d\n" "'$1'"`
        if (( $n != "13" )) && (( $n != "10" )) && (( $n != "32" )) && (( $n != "92" )) && (( $n != "110" )) && (( $n != "114" )); then
            return 0
        fi
        return 1
    }

    trim()
    {
        i=0
        str="$1"
        while (( i < ${#1} ))
        do
            char=${1:$i:1}
            iswhitespace "$char"
            if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
                str="${str:$i}"
                i=${#1}
            fi
            (( i += 1 ))
        done
        i=${#str}
        while (( i > "0" ))
        do
            (( i -= 1 ))
            char=${str:$i:1}
            iswhitespace "$char"
            if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
                (( i += 1 ))
                str="${str:0:$i}"
                i=0
            fi
        done
        echo "$str"
    }

#Call it like so
mystring=`trim "$mystring"`

Bash有一个称为参数展开的特性，它允许基于所谓的模式替换字符串(模式类似于正则表达式，但有基本的区别和限制)。 [flussence的原文:Bash有正则表达式，但它们隐藏得很好:]

下面演示如何从变量值中删除所有空白(甚至来自内部)。

$ var='abc def'
$ echo "$var"
abc def
# Note: flussence's original expression was "${var/ /}", which only replaced the *first* space char., wherever it appeared.
$ echo -n "${var//[[:space:]]/}"
abcdef