http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=94151


in reply to Dot star okay, or not?

Correct? Well, probably in most cases. However, after doing a search for "strip white space", I ran across a similar post a couple years back, that proposed this solution:
# This code originally posted by faq_monk for ($string) { s/^\s+//; s/\s+$//; }
His thoughts were that using .* was slow, destructive, and may fail with embedded newlines. Again, his words.

I would definitely recommend digging through the archives for information on this, as a lot of people have posted on this over the years, and there are bound to be a lot of insights and clever solutions like the one faq_monk posted.
-Eric