How can I strip first and last double quotes?

Question

I want to strip double quotes from:

string = \'\"\" \" \" \"\"\\\\1\" \" \"\" \"\"\'

to obtain:

string = \'\" \" \" \"\"\\\         


        

Answer 1

To remove the first and last characters, and in each case do the removal only if the character in question is a double quote:

import re

s = re.sub(r'^"|"$', '', s)

Note that the RE pattern is different than the one you had given, and the operation is sub ("substitute") with an empty replacement string (strip is a string method but does something pretty different from your requirements, as other answers have indicated).