How to trim whitespace (including tabs)?

Question

I've come to the conclusion that python has a function for just about everything I could ask for. It's just a matter of actually finding these functions. Is there a function that will trim not only spaces for whitespace, but also tabs?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

For leading and trailing whitespace:

s = '   foo    \t   '
print s.strip()

Otherwise, a regular expression works:

import re
pat = re.compile(r'\s+')
s = '  \t  foo   \t   bar \t  '
print pat.sub('', s)

Answer 2

Whitespace on the both sides:

str = "  \t a string example\t  "
str = str.strip()

Whitespace on the right side:

str = str.rstrip()

Whitespace on the left side:

str = str.lstrip()

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

str = str.strip(' \t\n\r')

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