How do i remove a tab from a string in python?

I am trying to remove all spaces/tabs/newlines in python 2.7 on Linux.

I wrote this, that should do the job:

myString="I want to Remove all white \t spaces, new lines \n and tabs \t"
myString = myString.strip(' \n\t')
print myString

output:

I want to Remove all white   spaces, new lines 
 and tabs

It seems like a simple thing to do, yet I am missing here something. Should I be importing something?

asked May 22, 2012 at 22:37

3

Use str.split([sep[, maxsplit]]) with no sep or sep=None:

From docs:

If sep is not specified or is None, a different splitting algorithm is applied: runs of consecutive whitespace are regarded as a single separator, and the result will contain no empty strings at the start or end if the string has leading or trailing whitespace.

Demo:

>>> myString.split()
['I', 'want', 'to', 'Remove', 'all', 'white', 'spaces,', 'new', 'lines', 'and', 'tabs']

Use str.join on the returned list to get this output:

>>> ' '.join(myString.split())
'I want to Remove all white spaces, new lines and tabs'

answered May 22, 2012 at 22:42

Ashwini ChaudharyAshwini Chaudhary

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0

If you want to remove multiple whitespace items and replace them with single spaces, the easiest way is with a regexp like this:

>>> import re
>>> myString="I want to Remove all white \t spaces, new lines \n and tabs \t"
>>> re.sub('\s+',' ',myString)
'I want to Remove all white spaces, new lines and tabs '

You can then remove the trailing space with .strip() if you want to.

answered May 22, 2012 at 22:40

MattHMattH

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Use the re library

import re
myString = "I want to Remove all white \t spaces, new lines \n and tabs \t"
myString = re.sub(r"[\n\t\s]*", "", myString)
print myString

Output:

IwanttoRemoveallwhitespaces,newlinesandtabs

answered Dec 30, 2017 at 16:36

skt7skt7

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1

This will only remove the tab, newlines, spaces and nothing else.

import re
myString = "I want to Remove all white \t spaces, new lines \n and tabs \t"
output   = re.sub(r"[\n\t\s]*", "", myString)

OUTPUT:

IwantoRemoveallwhiespaces,newlinesandtabs

Good day!

Jesuisme

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answered Dec 12, 2017 at 9:49

The Gr8 AdakronThe Gr8 Adakron

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1

import re

mystr = "I want to Remove all white \t spaces, new lines \n and tabs \t"
print re.sub(r"\W", "", mystr)

Output : IwanttoRemoveallwhitespacesnewlinesandtabs

answered Dec 31, 2012 at 11:32

Manish MulaniManish Mulani

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1

The above solutions suggesting the use of regex aren't ideal because this is such a small task and regex requires more resource overhead than the simplicity of the task justifies.

Here's what I do:

myString = myString.replace(' ', '').replace('\t', '').replace('\n', '')

or if you had a bunch of things to remove such that a single line solution would be gratuitously long:

removal_list = [' ', '\t', '\n']
for s in removal_list:
  myString = myString.replace(s, '')

answered May 1, 2019 at 20:09

rosstripirosstripi

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How about a one-liner using a list comprehension within join?

>>> foobar = "aaa bbb\t\t\tccc\nddd"
>>> print(foobar)
aaa bbb                 ccc
ddd

>>> print(''.join([c for c in foobar if c not in [' ', '\t', '\n']]))
aaabbbcccddd

answered Sep 30, 2020 at 14:11

sqqqrlysqqqrly

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Since there is not anything else that was more intricate, I wanted to share this as it helped me out.

This is what I originally used:

import requests
import re

url = 'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10711116/strip-spaces-tabs-newlines-python' # noqa
headers = {'user-agent': 'my-app/0.0.1'}
r = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
print("{}".format(r.content))

Undesired Result:

b'\r\n\r\n\r\n    \r\n\r\n    \r\n\r\n        \r\n        

This is what I changed it to:

import requests
import re

url = 'https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10711116/strip-spaces-tabs-newlines-python' # noqa
headers = {'user-agent': 'my-app/0.0.1'}
r = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
regex = r'\s+'
print("CNT: {}".format(re.sub(regex, " ", r.content.decode('utf-8'))))

Desired Result:

The precise regex that @MattH had mentioned, was what worked for me in fitting it into my code. Thanks!

Note: This is python3

answered May 15, 2019 at 6:54

JayRizzoJayRizzo

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