python How can I strip first and last double quotes

Question

Hello, I want to strip double quotes from

string = '"" " " ""\\1" " "" ""'

to become

string = '" " " ""\\1" " "" "'

I try to use rstrip, lstrip and strip('[^\"]|[\"$]') but it not work How can I do? sorry for my english. Thank for help me.

Answer 1

If the quotes you want to strip are always going to be "first and last" as you said, then you could simply use:

string = string[1:-1]

Answer 2

If string is always as you show:

string[1:-1]

Answer 3

If you are sure there is a " at the beginning and at the end, which you want to remove, just do:

string = string[1:len(string)-1]

or

string = string[1:-1]

Answer 4

If you can't assume that all the strings you process have double quotes you can use something like this:

if string.startswith('"') and string.endswith('"'):
    string = string[1:-1]

Edit:

I'm sure that you just used string as the variable name for exemplification here and in your real code it has a useful name, but I feel obliged to warn you that there is a module named string in the standard libraries. It's not loaded automatically, but if you ever use import string make sure your variable doesn't eclipse it.

Answer 5

To remove the first and last characters, and in each case do the removal only if the character in question is a double quote:

import re

s = re.sub(r'^"|"$', '', s)

Note that the RE pattern is different than the one you had given, and the operation is sub ("substitute") with an empty replacement string (strip is a string method but does something pretty different from your requirements, as other answers have indicated).

Answer 6

find the position of the first and the last " in your string

>>> s = '"" " " ""\\1" " "" ""'
>>> l = s.find('"')
>>> r = s.rfind('"')

>>> s[l+1:r]
'" " " ""\\1" " "" "'

Answer 7

Almost done. Quoting from http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html?highlight=strip#str.strip

The chars argument is a string specifying the set of characters to be removed.

[...]

The chars argument is not a prefix or suffix; rather, all combinations of its values are stripped:

So the argument is not a regexp.

>>> string = '"" " " ""\\1" " "" ""'
>>> string.strip('"')
' " " ""\\1" " "" '
>>> 

Note, that this is not exactly what you requested, because it eats multiple quotes from both end of the string!