Question

I have a one line function that works great in Chrome, and FF to shorten a string but throws an exception in IE. Does anyone know of a workaround for IE?

Here is my code:

var name = 'This is a really loooooooooooong string';

var shortName = name.trim().substring(0, 10).split(" ").slice(0, -1).join(" ") + "...";

alert(shortName );

Thanks,
-Paul

Answer 1

trim was standardized in ECMAScript 262 5th Edition, so it should be available in IE 9. For IE 8 and older, there are a couple of solutions available to you.

Since you tagged jQuery, you can use $.trim(str):

$.trim(name).substring(0, 10).split(" ").slice(0, -1).join(" ") + "...";

Alternatively, you can implement String#trim using a shim, like this one:

if(!String.prototype.trim) {
  String.prototype.trim = function () {
    return this.replace(/^\s+/,'').replace(/\s+$/, '');
  };
}

There’s also a decent comparison on different trim implementations available at Steven Levithan’s blog.