python - How do I trim whitespace?

Question

Is there a Python function that will trim whitespace (spaces and tabs) from a string?

Example: example string → example string

Answer 1

For whitespace on both sides use str.strip:

s = "   a string example  "
s = s.strip()

For whitespace on the right side use rstrip:

s = s.rstrip()

For whitespace on the left side lstrip:

s = s.lstrip()

As thedz points out, you can provide an argument to strip arbitrary characters to any of these functions like this:

s = s.strip(' 

')

This will strip any space, , , or characters from the left-hand side, right-hand side, or both sides of the string.

The examples above only remove strings from the left-hand and right-hand sides of strings. If you want to also remove characters from the middle of a string, try re.sub:

import re
print(re.sub('[s+]', '', s))

That should print out:

astringexample