Question

Assigning data to a variable that has a lot of white space in the beginning, I then do a trim to remove it and want to echo the first character which should be @. However, the echo displays nothing.

$data = '        @ JWHS8282';

trim($data);

echo $data[0];

Answer 1

Trim doesn’t accept a parameter by reference:

$data = trim($data);

It is defined as:

function trim( $input )
{
   ...
   return ...;
}

NOT

function trim( &$input )
{
   ...
}

Note that the docs mark the signature of trim as returning a string:

string trim ( string $str [, string $charlist ] )