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

Careful with "foo".rstrip(os.linesep): That will only chomp the newline characters for the platform where your Python is being executed. Imagine you're chimping the lines of a Windows file under Linux, for instance:

$ python
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Mar 18 2011, 09:09:48) 
[GCC 4.5.0 20100604 [gcc-4_5-branch revision 160292]] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os, sys
>>> sys.platform
'linux2'
>>> "foo\r\n".rstrip(os.linesep)
'foo\r'
>>>

Use "foo".rstrip("\r\n") instead, as Mike says above.