LTRIM()

Signature

LTRIM ( character_expression )

Parameters

• character_expression — An expression of character or binary data. *character_expression* can be a constant, variable, or column. *character_expression* must be of a data type, except text, ntext, and image, that is implicitly convertible to varchar. Otherwise, use CAST to explicitly convert *character_expression*.
• characters — A literal, variable, or function call of any non-LOB character type (nvarchar, varchar, nchar, or char) containing characters that should be removed. nvarchar(max) and varchar(max) types aren't allowed.

Examples

SELECT '[' + LTRIM('   keyboard') + ']' AS trimmed;

trimmed
-------------
[keyboard]

SELECT LTRIM('     Five spaces are at the beginning of this string.');

Five spaces are at the beginning of this string.

SELECT LTRIM('123abc.' , '123.');

abc.

Run against SQL Server 16.0.4265.3 on 2026-09-13. This is the output we got, not the documentation’s.

Available on

• SQL Server 2017 and later
• Azure SQL Database
• Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Azure Synapse Analytics
• Analytics Platform System (PDW)
• Microsoft Fabric warehouse
• Fabric SQL database