$string =~ s/^\s+//; 
$string =~ s/\s+$//;
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-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

Or, as I prefer,

s/^\s+//, s/\s+$// for $string;
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Makeshifts last the longest.

why is that better ?

Whatever floats your boat... I think that's somewhat less readable, though. But not so much so that I'd complain. I'd expect that doing it without the for would probably be more efficient, so if I found your code in a long loop, I'd likely change it for the more verbose form.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

use strict;

my $str = "\n  Sugarkannan is a smart guy    \n";

$str =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/;
print ">$str<\n";
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Prints:

>Sugarkannan is a smart guy<
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Update: s/printf/print/

Any particular reason you used printf instead of print? Or just force of habit from C? Just curious.

Naughty slip of the finger! 'twould be much better as print.

---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

Or if you wanted to keep the original string for later :

$nospace =  $1 if $string=~m/^\s*(\w+)\s*$/  ;
print $nospace  ;
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