As a nit, Perl FAQ trimming spaces says that running both the 2 regex'es above (ltrim and rtrim) is faster than the single regex trim. This post on StackOverflow Why is single regex slower? goes into more detail about exactly why that is true.

These 2 lines are such an idiom that I just type them from memory without needing to use a sub. With Perl, not every "shorter" formulation is faster.

In reply to Re^3: Prototype mismatch: sub main::trim: none vs ($) by Marshall
in thread Prototype mismatch: sub main::trim: none vs ($) at mysqlDB_serial.pl line 188. by bNathan

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