How can I remove a trailing newline?

Question

What is the Python equivalent of Perl\'s chomp function, which removes the last character of a string if it is a newline?

Answer 1

Just use :

line = line.rstrip("\n")

or

line = line.strip("\n")

You don't need any of this complicated stuff

Answer 2

Try the method rstrip() (see doc Python 2 and Python 3)

>>> 'test string\n'.rstrip()
'test string'

Python's rstrip() method strips all kinds of trailing whitespace by default, not just one newline as Perl does with chomp.

>>> 'test string \n \r\n\n\r \n\n'.rstrip()
'test string'

To strip only newlines:

>>> 'test string \n \r\n\n\r \n\n'.rstrip('\n')
'test string \n \r\n\n\r '

There are also the methods strip(), lstrip() and strip():

>>> s = "   \n\r\n  \n  abc   def \n\r\n  \n  "
>>> s.strip()
'abc   def'
>>> s.lstrip()
'abc   def \n\r\n  \n  '
>>> s.rstrip()
'   \n\r\n  \n  abc   def'

Answer 3

Note that rstrip doesn't act exactly like Perl's chomp() because it doesn't modify the string. That is, in Perl:

$x="a\n";

chomp $x

results in $x being "a".

but in Python:

x="a\n"

x.rstrip()

will mean that the value of x is still "a\n". Even x=x.rstrip() doesn't always give the same result, as it strips all whitespace from the end of the string, not just one newline at most.

Answer 4

s = s.rstrip()

will remove all newlines at the end of the string s. The assignment is needed because rstrip returns a new string instead of modifying the original string.

Answer 5

There are three types of line endings that we normally encounter: \n, \r and \r\n. A rather simple regular expression in re.sub, namely r"\r?\n?$", is able to catch them all.

(And we gotta catch 'em all, am I right?)

import re

re.sub(r"\r?\n?$", "", the_text, 1)

With the last argument, we limit the number of occurences replaced to one, mimicking chomp to some extent. Example:

import re

text_1 = "hellothere\n\n\n"
text_2 = "hellothere\n\n\r"
text_3 = "hellothere\n\n\r\n"

a = re.sub(r"\r?\n?$", "", text_1, 1)
b = re.sub(r"\r?\n?$", "", text_2, 1)
c = re.sub(r"\r?\n?$", "", text_3, 1)

... where a == b == c is True.

Answer 6

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This will work both for windows and linux (bit expensive with re sub if you are looking for only re solution)

import re 
if re.search("(\\r|)\\n$", line):
    line = re.sub("(\\r|)\\n$", "", line)

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