Because this is a common problem (and _has_ been answered here before) i can tell that there is a very efficient way to do it (probably the most efficient one of the less complicated):

s/^\s+//;
s/\s+$//;
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See perlop and perlre.

Check out trim() by japhy... a really neat sub that wraps and builds upon this very solution.

    --k.

Node How do I remove whitespace at the beginning or end of my string? is the Q&A's section answer to your problem. You'll find several ways to do it there.

If you're interested in an optimized version for trailing spaces (with discussion), try node Removing Trailing Whitespace: Multiple ways..

Michele.

$name =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g;
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I've always been fond of this, which also compresses "extra" spaces in the middle to a single space:

$name = join ' ', split ' ', $name;
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sub wsp {
   $_ = shift;
   join ' ', split;
}
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