removing whitespace when inserting data into table using md2

[codebyte]

Hi.

i created a textarea for users to enter a message, now if they enter couple of paragraphs they all come to same line as php/html removes all whitespace. so to fix that i am displaying their input as it is with pre tags.

i noticed that first line always intended about 200px.i checked the database field and their are some spaces introduced. how i can make sure that when i save/retrieve data it comes without any starting and trailing spaces. i tried php's trim but that did not help.

is there any function equivalent to mysql trim ?

please help
thanks