Question

I am a bit of an sql noob so please forgive. I can’t seem to find a usage example of LTRIM anywhere.

I have a NVARCHAR column in my table in which a number of entries have leading whitespace – I’m presuming if I run this it should do the trick:

SELECT LTRIM( ColumnName)
  From TableName;

Will this give the desired result?

Answer 1

No, it will trim leading spaces but not all white space (e.g. carriage returns).

Edit
It seems you are looking for an UPDATE query that will remove leading and trailing whitespace.

If by that you only mean “normal” spaces just use

    UPDATE TableName
   SET ColumnName = LTRIM(RTRIM(ColumnName ))

For all white space this should do it (from the comments here). Backup your data first!

    UPDATE TableName
   SET ColumnName = 
     SUBSTRING(
    ColumnName,
    PATINDEX('%[^ ' + char(09) + char(10) + char(13)  + char(20)  + ']%', 
    ColumnName),
    LEN(ColumnName) - PATINDEX('%[^ ' + char(09) + char(10) + char(13)  + char(20)  + ']%'
   , ColumnName) - 
    PATINDEX('%[^ ' + char(09) + char(10) + char(13)  + char(20)  + ']%', 
     REVERSE(ColumnName)) + 2)