Which setting helps you strip the leading space in file format options?

• A. STRIP_SPACE
• B. TRIM_SPACE
• C. LEAD_SPACE
• D. LEADING

Answer: (B)

Spaces at the start of a field can cause mismatches when loading data. The TRIM_SPACE setting in a Snowflake file format tells the loader to strip leading (and typically trailing) spaces from each field value as it reads the file. With TRIM_SPACE enabled, a value like ' John' becomes 'John' in the table, preventing issues in comparisons and joins and making data consistency better when the source file has padding. The other options listed aren’t standard file format controls for trimming whitespace, so they wouldn’t achieve this behavior. Enabling TRIM_SPACE is the straightforward way to ensure leading spaces aren’t treated as part of the data.