Remove spaces from std::string in C++

Question

What is the preferred way to remove spaces from a string in C++? I could loop through all the characters and build a new string, but is there a better way?

Answer 1

The best thing to do is to use the algorithm remove_if and isspace:

remove_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isspace);

Now the algorithm itself can't change the container(only modify the values), so it actually shuffles the values around and returns a pointer to where the end now should be. So we have to call string::erase to actually modify the length of the container:

str.erase(remove_if(str.begin(), str.end(), isspace), str.end());

We should also note that remove_if will make at most one copy of the data. Here is a sample implementation:

template<typename T, typename P>
T remove_if(T beg, T end, P pred)
{
    T dest = beg;
    for (T itr = beg;itr != end; ++itr)
        if (!pred(*itr))
            *(dest++) = *itr;
    return dest;
}

Answer 2

std::string::iterator end_pos = std::remove(str.begin(), str.end(), ' ');
str.erase(end_pos, str.end());

Answer 3

From gamedev

string.erase(std::remove_if(string.begin(), string.end(), std::isspace), string.end());

Answer 4

Can you use Boost String Algo? http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_35_0/doc/html/string_algo/usage.html#id1290573

erase_all(str, " "); 

Answer 5

For trimming, use boost string algorithms:

#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

// ...

string str1(" hello world! ");
trim(str1);      // str1 == "hello world!"

Answer 6

You can use this solution for removing a char:

#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

str.erase(remove(str.begin(), str.end(), char_to_remove), str.end());

Answer 7

Hi, you can do something like that. This function deletes all spaces.

string delSpaces(string &str) 
{
   str.erase(std::remove(str.begin(), str.end(), ' '), str.end());
   return str;
}

---

I made another function, that deletes all unnecessary spaces.

string delUnnecessary(string &str)
{
    int size = str.length();
    for(int j = 0; j<=size; j++)
    {
        for(int i = 0; i <=j; i++)
        {
            if(str[i] == ' ' && str[i+1] == ' ')
            {
                str.erase(str.begin() + i);
            }
            else if(str[0]== ' ')
            {
                str.erase(str.begin());
            }
            else if(str[i] == '\0' && str[i-1]== ' ')
            {
                str.erase(str.end() - 1);
            }
        }
    }
    return str;
}

Answer 8

string replaceinString(std::string str, std::string tofind, std::string toreplace)
{
        size_t position = 0;
        for ( position = str.find(tofind); position != std::string::npos; position = str.find(tofind,position) )
        {
                str.replace(position ,1, toreplace);
        }
        return(str);
}

use it:

string replace = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "%20");
string replace2 = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "-");
string replace3 = replaceinString(thisstring, " ", "+");

Answer 9

If you want to do this with an easy macro, here's one:

#define REMOVE_SPACES(x) x.erase(std::remove(x.begin(), x.end(), ' '), x.end())

This assumes you have done #include <string> of course.

Call it like so:

std::string sName = " Example Name ";
REMOVE_SPACES(sName);
printf("%s",sName.c_str()); // requires #include <stdio.h>

Answer 10

I used the below work around for long - not sure about its complexity.

s.erase(std::unique(s.begin(),s.end(),[](char s,char f){return (f==' '||s==' ');}),s.end());

when you wanna remove character ' ' and some for example - use

s.erase(std::unique(s.begin(),s.end(),[](char s,char f){return ((f==' '||s==' ')||(f=='-'||s=='-'));}),s.end());

likewise just increase the || if number of characters you wanna remove is not 1

but as mentioned by others the erase remove idiom also seems fine.

Answer 11

string removeSpaces(string word) {
    string newWord;
    for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
        if (word[i] != ' ') {
            newWord += word[i];
        }
    }

    return newWord;
}

This code basically takes a string and iterates through every character in it. It then checks whether that string is a white space, if it isn't then the character is added to a new string.

Answer 12

string removespace(string str)
{    
    int m = str.length();
    int i=0;
    while(i<m)
    {
        while(str[i] == 32)
        str.erase(i,1);
        i++;
    }    
}

Answer 13

I'm afraid it's the best solution that I can think of. But you can use reserve() to pre-allocate the minimum required memory in advance to speed up things a bit. You'll end up with a new string that will probably be shorter but that takes up the same amount of memory, but you'll avoid reallocations.

EDIT: Depending on your situation, this may incur less overhead than jumbling characters around.

You should try different approaches and see what is best for you: you might not have any performance issues at all.