Java Regex, remove leading spaces of each line

Question

Want to use Java String.replaceAll(regex, "") to remove all leading spaces of each line in a multi-line text string. if possible remove all carriage-returns as well. What the "regex" should be?

Answer 1

Converting my comment to answer so that solution is easy to find for future visitors.

You may use regex replacement in Java:

str = str.replaceAll("(?m)^\\s+|\\s+$", "");

RegEx Details:

• (?m) : Enable MULTILINE mode so that ^ and $ are matched in every line.
• ^\\s+ : Match 1+ whitespaces at line start
• | : OR
• \\s+$ : Match 1+ whitespaces before line end