Find the number of characters in a file using Python

Question

Here is the question:

I have a file with these words:

hey how are you
I am fine and you
Yes I am fine

And it is asked to find the numbe

Answer 1

You have two problems. One is the line endings and the other is the spaces in between.

Now there are many people who posted pretty good answers, but I find this method easier to understand:

characters = characters + len(line.strip()) - line.strip().count(' ')

line.strip() removes the trailing and leading spaces. Then I'm subtracting the number of spaces from the total length.