Python 3 useful tip-strip()-A useful built-in type.

Have you ever stumbled across a set of data that contains an extra underscore, character, or word as prefix or suffix, which you want to get rid of?

Python is known for having a resourceful standard library with lots of built-in types that can do a set of tasks in a jiffy. One such built-in type is str.strip([chars]). This built-in type in theory omits the set of characters given as an argument from the beginning and end of string. If no character argument is given, it removes the whitespace from the string. One of the example of the usage is as under:-

example_string = '    anexamplestring    '
example_string.strip()

"anexamplestring"

However, if we add certain characters in ‘char’ arguments, those characters will be removed from the beginning and end of the string until a character not given in the argument is reached on both side of the string. Example as under:-

example_string = '123_ab_1cde_3'
example_string.strip('123_')

"ab_1cde"

It must be noticed that the .strip() function stop deleting the characters from either side as soon as it reaches a character which is not passed in the argument. And, it will not remove the characters thereafter even if they are the one passed in the argument as in example above, once the strip() reaches the character ‘a’ moving from left to right, it stopped removing character and didn’t effect ‘_’ and ‘1’ thereafter. Similarly, strip() moving from right to left encounters character ‘e’ and stop functioning thereafter.