Deleting carriage returns caused by line reading

Question

I have a list:

Cat
Dog
Monkey
Pig

I have a script:

import sys
input_file = open(\'list.txt\', \'r\')
for line in input_file:
           


        

Answer 1

You can use .rstrip() to remove newlines from the right-hand side of a string:

line.rstrip('\n')

or you can tell it to remove all whitespace (including spaces, tabs and carriage returns):

line.rstrip()

It is a more specific version of the .strip() method which removes whitespace or specific characters from both sides of the string.

For your specific case, you could stick with a simple .strip() but for the general case where you want to remove only the newline, I'd stick with `.rstrip('\n').

I'd use a different method to write your strings though:

with open('list.txt') as input_file:
    print ','.join(['"{}"'.format(line.rstrip('\n')) for line in input_file])

By using ','.join() you avoid the last comma, and using the str.format() method is easier on the eyes than a lot of string concatenation (not to mention faster).