How should I remove all the leading spaces from a string? - swift

To remove leading and trailing whitespaces:

let trimmedString = string.stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.whitespaceCharacterSet())

Swift 3 / Swift 4:

let trimmedString = string.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces)

The correct way when you want to remove all kinds of whitespaces (based on this SO answer) is:

extension String {
    var stringByRemovingWhitespaces: String {
        let components = componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(.whitespaceCharacterSet())
        return components.joinWithSeparator("")
    }
}

Swift 3.0+ (3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0)

extension String {
    func removingWhitespaces() -> String {
        return components(separatedBy: .whitespaces).joined()
    }
}

EDIT

This answer was posted when the question was about removing all whitespaces, the question was edited to only mention leading whitespaces. If you only want to remove leading whitespaces use the following:

extension String {
    func removingLeadingSpaces() -> String {
        guard let index = firstIndex(where: { !CharacterSet(charactersIn: String($0)).isSubset(of: .whitespaces) }) else {
            return self
        }
        return String(self[index...])
    }
}