Extra line in output when printing inside a loop

Question

I can\'t figure out why the code #1 returns an extra empty line while code #2 doesn\'t. Could somebody explain this? The difference is an extra comma at the end of the code

Answer 1

The best general answer to this problem is to strip the trailing newline (if any!) as soon as you read it:

f = open('tasks.txt')
for i, text in enumerate(f, start=1):
    text = text.rstrip('\n')
    if i >= 2 and i <= 4:
        print "(%d) %s" % (i, text)

That way you uncouple your output from your input ... your output code may be 20 lines away or in a different function/method or even in a different module. Compensating for a newline in input by using a comma at the end of the print statement is not a robust solution.