有一个解决方案只使用Bash内置的通配符:

var="    abc    "
# remove leading whitespace characters
var="${var#"${var%%[![:space:]]*}"}"
# remove trailing whitespace characters
var="${var%"${var##*[![:space:]]}"}"   
printf '%s' "===$var==="

下面是同样的包装在一个函数中:

trim() {
    local var="$*"
    # remove leading whitespace characters
    var="${var#"${var%%[![:space:]]*}"}"
    # remove trailing whitespace characters
    var="${var%"${var##*[![:space:]]}"}"
    printf '%s' "$var"
}

你传递要以引号形式修剪的字符串，例如:

trim "   abc   "

这个解决方案的一个优点是它可以与任何posix兼容的shell一起工作。

参考

从Bash变量中删除前导和尾随空格(原始源代码)

使用Bash的扩展模式匹配功能(shopt -s extglob)，你可以这样使用:

修剪{# # * ()}

删除任意数量的前导空格。

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"`

这没有不必要的通配符问题，而且，内部空白是未修改的(假设$IFS被设置为默认值，即' \t\n')。

它一直读取到第一个换行符(但不包括换行符)或字符串的结尾，以先到者为准，并删除任何前导和尾随空格以及\t字符的混合。如果你想保留多行(同时去掉开头和结尾换行符)，请使用read -r -d " var << eof;但是请注意，如果您的输入恰好包含\neof，它将在之前被切断。(其他形式的空白，即\r、\f和\v，即使您将它们添加到$IFS，也不会被剥离。)

read -r var << eof
$var
eof

答案有很多，但我仍然认为我刚刚写的剧本值得一提，因为:

it was successfully tested in the shells bash/dash/busybox shell it is extremely small it doesn't depend on external commands and doesn't need to fork (->fast and low resource usage) it works as expected: it strips all spaces and tabs from beginning and end, but not more important: it doesn't remove anything from the middle of the string (many other answers do), even newlines will remain special: the "$*" joins multiple arguments using one space. if you want to trim & output only the first argument, use "$1" instead if doesn't have any problems with matching file name patterns etc

脚本:

trim() {
  local s2 s="$*"
  until s2="${s#[[:space:]]}"; [ "$s2" = "$s" ]; do s="$s2"; done
  until s2="${s%[[:space:]]}"; [ "$s2" = "$s" ]; do s="$s2"; done
  echo "$s"
}

用法:

mystring="   here     is
    something    "
mystring=$(trim "$mystring")
echo ">$mystring<"

输出:

>here     is
    something<

还有一个单元测试的解决方案，它从stdin中删除$IFS，并适用于任何输入分隔符(甚至$'\0'):

ltrim()
{
    # Left-trim $IFS from stdin as a single line
    # $1: Line separator (default NUL)
    local trimmed
    while IFS= read -r -d "${1-}" -u 9
    do
        if [ -n "${trimmed+defined}" ]
        then
            printf %s "$REPLY"
        else
            printf %s "${REPLY#"${REPLY%%[!$IFS]*}"}"
        fi
        printf "${1-\x00}"
        trimmed=true
    done 9<&0

    if [[ $REPLY ]]
    then
        # No delimiter at last line
        if [ -n "${trimmed+defined}" ]
        then
            printf %s "$REPLY"
        else
            printf %s "${REPLY#"${REPLY%%[!$IFS]*}"}"
        fi
    fi
}

rtrim()
{
    # Right-trim $IFS from stdin as a single line
    # $1: Line separator (default NUL)
    local previous last
    while IFS= read -r -d "${1-}" -u 9
    do
        if [ -n "${previous+defined}" ]
        then
            printf %s "$previous"
            printf "${1-\x00}"
        fi
        previous="$REPLY"
    done 9<&0

    if [[ $REPLY ]]
    then
        # No delimiter at last line
        last="$REPLY"
        printf %s "$previous"
        if [ -n "${previous+defined}" ]
        then
            printf "${1-\x00}"
        fi
    else
        last="$previous"
    fi

    right_whitespace="${last##*[!$IFS]}"
    printf %s "${last%$right_whitespace}"
}

trim()
{
    # Trim $IFS from individual lines
    # $1: Line separator (default NUL)
    ltrim ${1+"$@"} | rtrim ${1+"$@"}
}