Python Adventures

In Perl there is a function called chomp() which is very useful when reading a text file line by line. It removes the newline character ('\n') at the end of lines. How to do the same thing with Python?

Solution #1

For having the same effect, remove the '\n' from each line:

#!/usr/bin/env python

f = open('test.txt', 'r')
for line in f:
    line = line.replace('\n', '')    # remove '\n' only
    # do something with line
    
f.close()

This will replace the '\n' with an empty string.

Solution #2

There is a function called rstrip() which removes ALL whitespace characters on the right side of a string. This is not entirely the same as the previous because it will remove all whitespace characters on the right side, not only the '\n'. However, if you don’t need those whitespace characters, you can use this solution too.

#!/usr/bin/env python

f = open('test.txt', 'r')
for line in f:
    line = line.rstrip()    # remove ALL whitespaces on the right side, including '\n'
    # do something with line
    
f.close()

Update (20111011): As it was pointed out by John C in the comments, “rstrip() also accepts a string of characters…, so line.rstrip('\n') will remove just trailing newline characters.” More info on rstrip here.