How can I strip first and last double quotes?

Question

I want to strip double quotes from:

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

to obtain:

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


        

Answer 1

I have some code that needs to strip single or double quotes, and I can't simply ast.literal_eval it.

if len(arg) > 1 and arg[0] in ('"\'') and arg[-1] == arg[0]:
    arg = arg[1:-1]

This is similar to ToolmakerSteve's answer, but it allows 0 length strings, and doesn't turn the single character " into an empty string.