Question

I get a string that can have from zero to multiple leading and trailing spaces.

I’m trying to get rid of them without lot of hackery but my code looks huge.

How to do this in a clean way?

Answer 1

as easy as:

$ src="      some text          "

$ dst="  $(echo $src)" 

$ echo ":$dst:"
:  some text:

$(echo $src) will get rid of all around spaces.
than you simply add how much spaces you need before it.