Remove Leading and Trailing Whitespace in R DataFrame

The trimws() function can be used to remove leading and trailing whitespace in R DataFrame:

(1) To remove leading and trailing whitespace under a single column:

df$column_name <- trimws(df$column_name)

(2) To remove leading and trailing whitespace across the entire DataFrame:

df[] <- lapply(df, trimws)

Example 1: Remove Whitespace under a Single Column

To remove leading and trailing whitespace under the “product” column:

# Create a sample DataFrame
df <- data.frame(product = c("   computer   ", "    monitor", "keyboard   ", "printer", "tablet"),
                 price = c(1200, 400, 100, 200, 300),
                 brand = c("AAA", "BBB", "CCC", "DDD", "EEE")
                 )

# Before trimming
print("Before trimming:")
print(df)

# Trim whitespace under the product column
df$product <- trimws(df$product)

# After trimming
print("After trimming:")
print(df)

The result:

Before trimming:

         product price brand
1    computer     1200   AAA
2        monitor   400   BBB
3    keyboard      100   CCC
4        printer   200   DDD
5         tablet   300   EEE

After trimming:

   product price brand
1 computer  1200   AAA
2  monitor   400   BBB
3 keyboard   100   CCC
4  printer   200   DDD
5   tablet   300   EEE

Example 2: Remove Whitespace across the Entire DataFrame

To remove leading and trailing whitespace across the entire DataFrame in R:

# Create a sample DataFrame
df <- data.frame(product = c("   computer   ", "    monitor", "keyboard   ", "printer", "tablet"),
                 price = c(1200, 400, 100, 200, 300),
                 brand = c("  AAA   ", "BBB   ", "CCC    ", "DDD", "EEE")
                 )

# Before trimming
print("Before trimming:")
print(df)

# Apply trimws() across the entire DataFrame
df[] <- lapply(df, trimws)

# After trimming
print("After trimming:")
print(df)

The result:

Before trimming:

         product price    brand
1    computer     1200   AAA   
2        monitor   400   BBB   
3    keyboard      100  CCC    
4        printer   200      DDD
5         tablet   300      EEE

After trimming:

   product price brand
1 computer  1200   AAA
2  monitor   400   BBB
3 keyboard   100   CCC
4  printer   200   DDD
5   tablet   300   EEE