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

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.