Share via


LTRIM (SSIS Expression)

Returns a character expression after removing leading spaces.

Note

LTRIM does not remove white-space characters such as the tab or line feed characters. Unicode provides code points for many different types of spaces, but this function recognizes only the Unicode code point 0x0020. When double-byte character set (DBCS) strings are converted to Unicode they may include space characters other than 0x0020 and the function cannot remove such spaces. To remove all kinds of spaces, you can use the Microsoft Visual Basic .NET LTrim method in a script run from the Script component.

Syntax

LTRIM(character expression)

Arguments

  • character_expression
    Is a character expression from which to remove spaces.

Result Types

DT_WSTR

Remarks

LTRIM works only with the DT_WSTR data type. A character_expression argument that is a string literal or a data column with the DT_STR data type is implicitly cast to the DT_WSTR data type before LTRIM performs its operation. Other data types must be explicitly cast to the DT_WSTR data type. For more information, see Integration Services Data Types and Cast (SSIS Expression): Convert SSIS Data Types.

LTRIM returns a null result if the argument is null.

Examples

This example removes leading spaces from a string literal. The return result is "Hello".

LTRIM("    Hello")

This example removes leading spaces from the FirstName column.

LTRIM(FirstName)

This example removes leading spaces from the FirstName variable.

LTRIM(@FirstName)