How to strip all whitespace from string

Question

How do I strip all the spaces in a python string? For example, I want a string like strip my spaces to be turned into stripmyspaces, but I cannot s

Answer 1

For Python 3:

>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r'\s+', '', 'strip my \n\t\r ASCII and \u00A0 \u2003 Unicode spaces')
'stripmyASCIIandUnicodespaces'
>>> # Or, depending on the situation:
>>> re.sub(r'(\s|\u180B|\u200B|\u200C|\u200D|\u2060|\uFEFF)+', '', \
... '\uFEFF\t\t\t strip all \u000A kinds of \u200B whitespace \n')
'stripallkindsofwhitespace'

...handles any whitespace characters that you're not thinking of - and believe us, there are plenty.

\s on its own always covers the ASCII whitespace:

• (regular) space
• tab
• new line (\n)
• carriage return (\r)
• form feed
• vertical tab

Additionally:

• for Python 2 with re.UNICODE enabled,
• for Python 3 without any extra actions,

...\s also covers the Unicode whitespace characters, for example:

• non-breaking space,
• em space,
• ideographic space,

...etc. See the full list here, under "Unicode characters with White_Space property".

However \s DOES NOT cover characters not classified as whitespace, which are de facto whitespace, such as among others:

• zero-width joiner,
• Mongolian vowel separator,
• zero-width non-breaking space (a.k.a. byte order mark),

...etc. See the full list here, under "Related Unicode characters without White_Space property".

So these 6 characters are covered by the list in the second regex, \u180B|\u200B|\u200C|\u200D|\u2060|\uFEFF.

Sources:

• https://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_character_property