On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:21:58 -0800, S Borg wrote:
> Hello,
>
> If I have a string, what is the strongest way to assure the
> removal of any line break characters?
What do you mean "strongest"? Fastest, most memory efficient, least lines
of code, most lines of code, least bugs, or just a vague "best"?
> Line break characters must always be the last character in a line,
Must they? Are you sure? What happens if the file you are reading from
doesn't end with a blank line?
> so would this: str = linestring[:-1]
> work?
Using the name of a built-in function (like str) is called shadowing. It
is a BAD idea. Once you do that, your code can no longer call the built-in
function.
s = line[:-1] will work if you absolutely know for sure the line ends with
a newline.
This would be safer, if you aren't sure:
if line[-1] == '\n':
s = line[:-1]
else:
s = line
but that assumes that line is a non-empty string. If you aren't sure about
that either, this is safer still:
if line and line[-1] == '\n':
s = line[:-1]
else:
s = line
If you want to clear all whitespace from the end of the line, not just
newline, this is better still because you don't have to do any tests:
s = line.rstrip()
There is also a lstrip to strip leading whitespace, and strip() to strip
both leading and trailing whitespace.
--
Steven.
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