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JavaScript JavaScript Basics Working with Strings Combine Strings

Posted by Kim B
Kim B
4,991 Points

How to trim a user's input?

I'm sure this will be covered later, but it came to mind now. In this video, we see the necessity of adding a space in a concatenated string to make our final message legible. However, what about if a user erroneously adds a space at the end of their name, for example? Is there a trim function (er, command... method?) we can apply to our prompt() method to account for that?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

Strings do in fact have a method named "trim" that will remove extra spaces from both the beginning and end.
For example:

let sloppy = "  sample   ";
let neaten = sloppy.trim();    // will be "sample" (no spaces)
Kim B
Kim B
4,991 Points

So how would I apply this to creating a variable name from a user's input in the prompt() method? Would it go liiiiike...

const name = trim( prompt("What's your name?") );

ooooor

const name = prompt.trim("What's your name?");

oooorrr

const name = prompt("What's your name?");

And then whenever I wanted to ... call? on the name variable, I'd use name.trim() ?

Or maybe do like what you did and have const rawName = prompt("Your name?"); and then create something like const name = rawName.trim(); ?

I suspect I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I must know! lol

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,269 Points

"Trim" doesn't take an argument, but "prompt" does, so:

const name = prompt("What's your name?").trim();

Your last example would also work, and would be good if you needed to keep the input intact for some reason.