function trim(str:String) { return str.replace(/^s/, “”).replace(/s$/, “”); }

Hi Anthony, that looks like a good option. It’s worth remembering, though, that support for regular expressions only appears in ActionScript 3.0.

Hi Bryan, thanks for posting. I took the liberty of re-formatting your post that the weblog software mangled. Hopefully it looks like you intended?

1. I find it much more convenient in ECMAScript to have trim overloaded on the String prototype, as it’s unwaveringly applied to strings.
2. running a substr on each loop is relatively slow. It’s harder, but faster, to just keep track of position.
3. I’ve added a way to create the charcodes as needed, so you can, say, strip the ‘/’s off a pathname if you need to.

String.prototype.trim = function (strip):String {
        if (!!strip)
            strip = " \t\r\n";
        var 
            codes = {},
            i,
            start=0,
            len=this.length;
        for (i=0; i<strip.length; i++)
            codes[strip.charCodeAt(i)]=1;
    while(codes[this.charCodeAt(start)]==1) 
        start++;
    len-=start;
    while(codes[this.charCodeAt(start+len-1)]==1)
        len--;
    return this.substr(start, len);
}