Remove all whitespace in a string

python trim removing-whitespace

co2f2e · Nov 25, 2011 · Viewed 1.8M times · Source

I want to eliminate all the whitespace from a string, on both ends, and in between words.

I have this Python code:

def my_handle(self):
    sentence = ' hello  apple  '
    sentence.strip()

But that only eliminates the whitespace on both sides of the string. How do I remove all whitespace?

Answer

If you want to remove leading and ending spaces, use str.strip():

sentence = ' hello  apple'
sentence.strip()
>>> 'hello  apple'

If you want to remove all space characters, use str.replace():

(NB this only removes the “normal” ASCII space character ' ' U+0020 but not any other whitespace)

sentence = ' hello  apple'
sentence.replace(" ", "")
>>> 'helloapple'

If you want to remove duplicated spaces, use str.split():

sentence = ' hello  apple'
" ".join(sentence.split())
>>> 'hello apple'