How do I trim whitespace from a string

Question

How do I remove leading and trailing whitespace from a string in Python   For example     Hello   -- gt   Hello    Hello   -- gt   Hello   Hello    -- gt   Hello   Bob has a cat  -- gt   Bob has a cat

User · Accepted Answer

Just one space or all consecutive spaces? If the second, then strings already have a .strip() method:

>>> ' Hello '.strip()
'Hello'
>>> ' Hello'.strip()
'Hello'
>>> 'Bob has a cat'.strip()
'Bob has a cat'
>>> '   Hello   '.strip()  # ALL consecutive spaces at both ends removed
'Hello'

If you only need to remove one space however, you could do it with:

def strip_one_space(s):
    if s.endswith(" "): s = s[:-1]
    if s.startswith(" "): s = s[1:]
    return s

>>> strip_one_space("   Hello ")
'  Hello'

Also, note that str.strip() removes other whitespace characters as well (e.g. tabs and newlines). To remove only spaces, you can specify the character to remove as an argument to strip, i.e.:

>>> "  Hello\n".strip(" ")
'Hello\n'

User · Answer

How do I remove leading and trailing whitespace from a string in Python    So below solution will remove leading and trailing whitespaces as well as intermediate whitespaces too  Like if you need to get a clear string values without multiple whitespaces    gt  gt  gt  str 1         Hello World   gt  gt  gt  print     join str 1 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 2         Hello      World   gt  gt  gt  print     join str 2 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 3    Hello World        gt  gt  gt  print     join str 3 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 4    Hello      World        gt  gt  gt  print     join str 4 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 5         Hello World        gt  gt  gt  print     join str 5 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 6         Hello      World        gt  gt  gt  print     join str 6 split     Hello World  gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  str 7    Hello World   gt  gt  gt  print     join str 7 split     Hello World   As you can see this will remove all the multiple whitespace in the string output is Hello World for all   Location doesn t matter  But if you really need leading and trailing whitespaces  then strip   would be find

User · Answer

You want strip    myphrases     quot  Hello  quot    quot  Hello quot    quot Hello  quot    quot Bob has a cat quot    for phrase in myphrases      print phrase strip

User · Answer

If you want to trim specified number of spaces from left and right  you could do this   def remove outer spaces text  num of leading  num of trailing       text   list text      for i in range num of leading           if text i                      text i               else              break      for i in range 1  num of trailing 1           if text -i                      text -i               else              break     return    join text   txt1       MY name is       print remove outer spaces txt1  1  1      result is     MY name is      print remove outer spaces txt1  2  3      result is    MY name is    print remove outer spaces txt1  6  8      result is   MY name is

User · Answer

strip is not limited to whitespace characters either     remove all leading trailing commas  periods and hyphens title   title strip    -

User · Answer

I wanted to remove the too-much spaces in a string  also in between the string  not only in the beginning or end   I made this  because I don t know how to do it otherwise   string    Name   David         Account  1234             Another thing  something      ready   False while ready    False      pos   string find           if pos    -1         string   string replace               else         ready   True print string    This replaces double spaces in one space until you have no double spaces any more

User · Answer

This will remove all leading and trailing whitespace in myString   myString strip

User · Answer

In order to remove  quot Whitespace quot  which causes plenty of indentation errors when running your finished code or programs in Pyhton  Just do the following obviously if Python keeps telling that the error s  is indentation in line 1 2 3 4 5  etc     just fix that line back and forth  However  if you still get problems about the program that are related to typing mistakes  operators  etc  make sure you read why error Python is yelling at you  The first thing to check is that you have your indentation right  If you do  then check to see if you have mixed tabs with spaces in your code  Remember  the code will look fine  to you   but the interpreter refuses to run it  If you suspect this  a quick fix is to bring your code into an IDLE edit window  then choose Edit    quot Select All from the menu system  before choosing Format    quot Untabify Region  If you   ve mixed tabs with spaces  this will convert all your tabs to spaces in one go  and fix any indentation issues

User · Answer

As pointed out in answers above my string strip    will remove all the leading and trailing whitespace characters such as  n   r   t   f  space    For more flexibility use the following  Removes only leading whitespace chars  my string lstrip   Removes only trailing whitespace chars  my string rstrip   Removes specific whitespace chars  my string strip   n   or my string lstrip   n r   or my string rstrip   n t   and so on   More details are available in the docs

User · Answer

I could not find a solution to what I was looking for so I created some custom functions  You can try them out   def cleansed s  str           param s  String to be cleansed        assert s is not  None or           return trimmed s replace          replace               return trimmed s    def trimmed s  str           param s  String to be cleansed        assert s is not  None or         ss   trim start and end s  replace                while      in ss          ss   ss replace                return ss   def trim start and end s  str           param s  String to be cleansed        assert s is not  None or         return trim start trim end s     def trim start s  str           param s  String to be cleansed        assert s is not  None or         chars          for c in s          if c is not     or len chars   gt  0              chars append c      return    join chars  lower     def trim end s  str           param s  String to be cleansed        assert s is not  None or         chars          for c in reversed s           if c is not     or len chars   gt  0              chars append c      return    join reversed chars   lower     s1      b Beer   s2    Beer  b      s3          Beer  b      s4      bread butter    Beer  b       cdd   trim start s1  cddd   trim end s2  clean1   cleansed s3  clean2   cleansed s4   print   nStr   0  Len   1  Cleansed   2  Len   3   format s1  len s1   cdd  len cdd    print   nStr   0  Len   1  Cleansed   2  Len   3   format s2  len s2   cddd  len cddd    print   nStr   0  Len   1  Cleansed   2  Len   3   format s3  len s3   clean1  len clean1    print   nStr   0  Len   1  Cleansed   2  Len   3   format s4  len s4   clean2  len clean2

User · Answer

This can also be done with a regular expression  import re  input      Hello   output   re sub r   s   s         input    output    Hello

User · Answer

Well seeing this thread as a beginner got my head spinning  Hence came up with a simple shortcut   Though str strip   works to remove leading  amp  trailing spaces it does nothing for spaces between characters   words input  Enter the word to test     If I have a user enter discontinous threads it becomes a problem   input       he llo  ho w are y ou    n words strip   print n    output  he llo  ho w are y ou  - only leading  amp  trailing spaces are removed    Instead use str replace   to make more sense plus less error  amp  more to the point   The following code can generalize the use of str replace    def whitespace words       r words replace           removes all whitespace     n r replace            other uses of replace     return n def run        words input  Enter the word to test     take user input     m whitespace words   encase the def in run   to imporve usability on various functions     o m count  f     for testing     return m o print run    output-   hello howareyou   0    Can be helpful while inheriting the same in diff  functions

[python] How do I trim whitespace from a string?

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