Backslash and LTrim/RTrim

I have a varchar2 field where the text is formatted in a on insert, update trigger. In the text a cr/lf is denoted by '\r\n'. I want to remove all '\r\n' from the beginning and the end of the text. Is there a way to do this using LTrim and RTrim? The first thought that came to my mind was to use this little snippet:

create or replace function trim_text(
  atext in varchar2
) return varchar2 as

  btext varchar2(100);
begin
  btext := ' ';
  while atext ^= btext loop
    btext := atext;
    atext := rtrim(ltrim(atext,'\r\n'), '\r\n');   end loop;
  return atext;
end;

It works as far as it removes all '\r\n' as I wanted to but it does more. It also removes all 'r' and all 'n' from then beginning and the end of the text, ie

trim_text('\r\nChildren\r\n\r\n')

will give me back 'Childre'

I do have a workaround - but the above code looks much more nice:

create or replace function trim_text(
  atext in varchar2
) return varchar2 as

  btext varchar2(100);
begin
  btext := ' ';
  while atext ^= btext loop
    btext := atext;
    if substr(atext, Length(atext) - 3, 4) = '\r\n' then       atext := substr(atext, 1, Length(atext) - 4);     end if;
    if substr(atext, 1, 4) = '\r\n' then       atext := substr(atext, 5, Length(atext) - 4);     end if;
  end loop;
  return atext;
end;

//Jonas

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Before you buy. Received on Thu Jul 13 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT