This is what you want:

function ltrim(str) {
  if(!str) return str;
  return str.replace(/^\s+/g, '');
}

Also for ordinary trim in IE8+:

function trimStr(str) {
  if(!str) return str;
  return str.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '');
}

And for trimming the right side:

function rtrim(str) {
  if(!str) return str;
  return str.replace(/\s+$/g, '');
}

Or as polyfill:

// for IE8
if (!String.prototype.trim)
{
    String.prototype.trim = function ()
    {
        // return this.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, '');
        return this.replace(/^[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+|[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+$/g, '');
    };
}

if (!String.prototype.trimStart)
{
    String.prototype.trimStart = function ()
    {
        // return this.replace(/^\s+/g, '');
        return this.replace(/^[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+/g, '');
    };
}

if (!String.prototype.trimEnd)
{
    String.prototype.trimEnd = function ()
    {
        // return this.replace(/\s+$/g, '');
        return this.replace(/[\s\uFEFF\xA0]+$/g, '');
    };
}

Note:
\s: includes spaces, tabs \t, newlines \n and few other rare characters, such as \v, \f and \r.
\uFEFF: Unicode Character 'ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE' (U+FEFF)
\xA0: ASCII 0xA0 (160: non-breaking space) is not recognised as a space character

• \s means whitespace characters in regex, like space, tab, etc.
• ^ means the beginning of the string
• $ means the end of the string
• | means OR (match the left side or the right side)
• + means 1 or more (based off of the rule on the left)
• /a regex/g the g means "global", aka "match multiple times" since you could need to match at the beginning AND end

So the regex means:

/^\s+|\s+$/g
/         /       Wrap the regex (how you do it in JS)
 ^\s+             Try to match at the beginning one or more whitespace chars
     |            Or...
      \s+$        Try to match whitespace chars at the end
           g      Match as many times as you can

String.prototype.replace replaces the match(es) found in the regex with the string provided as the 2nd argument, in this case an empty string.

So the process internally is:

1. Look for all sections that match the regex (which will be the whitespace at the beginning and the whitespace at the end
2. Replace each match with "", removing those matches entirely

let hello = "   Hello, World!  ";
let wsRegex = /^\s+|\s+$/g; 
let result = hello.replace(wsRegex, "");

console.log('"' + result + '"');

Most people use String.prototype.replaceAll instead of .replace when they use the global flag

let hello = "   Hello, World!  ";
let wsRegex = /^\s+|\s+$/g; 
let result = hello.replaceAll(wsRegex, "");

console.log('"' + result + '"');