LTRIM

Syntax

Description of the illustration ltrim.gif

Purpose

LTRIM removes from the left end of char all of the characters contained in set. If you do not specify set, then it defaults to a single blank. If char is a character literal, then you must enclose it in single quotation marks. Oracle Database begins scanning char from its first character and removes all characters that appear in set until reaching a character not in set and then returns the result.

Both char and set can be any of the data types CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, CLOB, or NCLOB. The string returned is of VARCHAR2 data type if char is a character data type, NVARCHAR2 if char is a national character data type, and a LOB if char is a LOB data type.

Examples

The following example trims all the left-most occurrences of less than sign (<), greater than sign (>) , and equal sign (=) from a string:

SELECT LTRIM('<=====>BROWNING<=====>', '<>=') "LTRIM Example"
  FROM DUAL;

LTRIM Example
---------------
BROWNING<=====>