Question

How can I trim a string by a whole string instead of a list of single characters?

I want to remove all   and whitespaces at beginning and end of an HTML string. But method String.Trim() does only have overloads for set of characters and not for set of strings.

Answer 1

You could use HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(String) and use the resultant as an input for String.Trim()

HttpUtility.HtmlDecode on MSDN
HttpServerUtility.HtmlDecode on MSDN (a wrapper you can access through the Page.Server property)

string stringWithNonBreakingSpaces;
string trimmedString =  String.Trim(HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(stringWithNonBreakingSpaces));

Note: This solution would decode all the HTML strings in the input.