Perl: trimErroneousCharactersAtEnds

gistfile1

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# subroutine to trim off the white space, carriage returns, pipes, and commas from both ends of each string or array
sub trimErroneousCharactersAtEnds {
	my $guy = shift;
	return if !defined $guy;
	my $type = (ref(\$guy) eq 'REF') ? ref($guy) : ref(\$guy);
	if ( $type eq 'ARRAY') { # Reference to an array
		foreach(@{$guy}) {  #for each element in @{$guy}
			s/\s+$//g;
			s/,+$//g;
			s/[\s+|\r+|\015\012+|\012+|\n+|,+]$//g;  #replace one or more spaces at the end of it with nothing (deleting them)
			s/\s+^//g;
			s/,+^//g;
			s/^[\s+|\r+|\015\012+|\012+|\n+|,+]//g;  #replace one or more spaces at the beginning of it with nothing (deleting them)
		}
	}
	elsif ( $type eq 'SCALAR' ) { # Reference to a scalar
		$guy=~ s/\s+$//g;
		$guy=~ s/\r+$//g;
		$guy=~ s/\n+$//g;
		$guy=~ s/\012+$//g;
		$guy=~ s/\015\012+$//g;
		$guy=~ s/,+$//g;
		
		$guy=~ s/^\s+//g;
		$guy=~ s/^\r+//g;
		$guy=~ s/^\n+//g;
		$guy=~ s/^\012+//g;
		$guy=~ s/^\015\012+//g;
		$guy=~ s/^,+//g;
	}
	return $guy;
}