bizarre behavior using .lstrip

[Pete Jereb]

Python 2.3 (#46, Jul 29 2003, 18:54:32) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32

s = 'chg bonn_fee'
print s chg bonn_fee print s.lstrip('chg ') bonn_fee
s = 'chg conn_fee'
print s chg conn_fee print s.lstrip('chg ') onn_fee
Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?

Note that if I just strip 'chg' and not the one whitespace character
next to it I get the expected result:
print s.lstrip('chg') conn

but extending the right quote by one space not only strips the
whitespace but the c:
print s.lstrip('chg ')

onn
Not really sure what's causing this, but it's making me change the
text parser I'm 600 lines into.

[Peter Hansen]

Pete Jereb wrote:

Python 2.3 (#46, Jul 29 2003, 18:54:32) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32

s = 'chg bonn_fee'
print s chg bonn_fee print s.lstrip('chg ') bonn_fee
s = 'chg conn_fee'
print s chg conn_fee print s.lstrip('chg ')

onn_fee

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?

Based on the behaviour you describe, I would assume lstrip()
removes, starting at the beginning of the string, all characters
which are *anywhere* in the argument string you give it, until
it encounters a character not in that string, at which point it
stops.

-Peter

[Jeremy Dillworth]

As an alternative you could use re.sub()

import re
s = 'chg cbonn_fee'
print re.sub('chg ', '', s)

cbonn_fee
On Friday 19 September 2003 8:11 pm, Peter Hansen wrote: Pete Jereb wrote:

Python 2.3 (#46, Jul 29 2003, 18:54:32) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32

>> s = 'chg bonn_fee'
>> print s

chg bonn_fee

>> print s.lstrip('chg ')

bonn_fee

>> s = 'chg conn_fee'
>> print s

chg conn_fee

>> print s.lstrip('chg ')

onn_fee

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?

Based on the behaviour you describe, I would assume lstrip()
removes, starting at the beginning of the string, all characters
which are *anywhere* in the argument string you give it, until
it encounters a character not in that string, at which point it
stops.

-Peter

[Jeremy Dillworth]

whoops! Forgot the '^' in the regex...

import re
s = 'chg cbonn_fee'
print re.sub('^chg ', '', s)

On Friday 19 September 2003 10:43 pm, Jeremy Dillworth wrote:

As an alternative you could use re.sub()
import re
s = 'chg cbonn_fee'
print re.sub('chg ', '', s)

cbonn_fee

On Friday 19 September 2003 8:11 pm, Peter Hansen wrote:

Pete Jereb wrote:

Python 2.3 (#46, Jul 29 2003, 18:54:32) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32

>>> s = 'chg bonn_fee'
>>> print s

chg bonn_fee

>>> print s.lstrip('chg ')

bonn_fee

>>> s = 'chg conn_fee'
>>> print s

chg conn_fee

>>> print s.lstrip('chg ')

onn_fee

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?

Based on the behaviour you describe, I would assume lstrip()
removes, starting at the beginning of the string, all characters
which are *anywhere* in the argument string you give it, until
it encounters a character not in that string, at which point it
stops.

-Peter

[Jules Dubois]

On 19 Sep 2003 17:07:47 -0700, in article
<68**************************@posting.google.com >, Pete Jereb wrote:

s = 'chg conn_fee'
print s chg conn_fee print s.lstrip('chg ') onn_fee

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?
It was removed, as you requested. lstrip('chg ') means remove every
occurence of space, 'g', 'h', and 'c' from the front (left) of the string.

print s.lstrip('chg') conn

lstrip('chg') stops stripping when it finds a character not in 'chg'. The
space is the first character not 'chg' so that's where lstrip stops
stripping.

print s.lstrip('chg ')

onn

lstrip('chg ') stops stripping when it finds a character not in 'chg '.
The 'o' is the first character not in 'chg' so that's where lstrip stops
stripping.
Not really sure what's causing this [...]
As they said where I used to work, WAD: it Works As Designed.
[...] but it's making me change the
text parser I'm 600 lines into.

It's not clear what you're trying to do. Do you want to remove all the
leading space, 'g', 'h' and 'c' characters from the string, or do you want
to remove the leading (exact) string "chg " as a whole?

One way to remove the leading 'g', 'h', and 'c' characters from the front
of the string first, and then remove spaces from the resulting string

print s.lstrip('chg').lstrip()

[Terry Reedy]

"Peter Hansen" <pe***@engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3F***************@engcorp.com...

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee go?

Based on the behaviour you describe, I would assume lstrip()
removes, starting at the beginning of the string, all characters
which are *anywhere* in the argument string you give it, until
it encounters a character not in that string, at which point it
stops.

Good call: from Lib Ref 2.2.6.1 String Methods

lstrip( [chars])

Return a copy of the string with leading characters removed. If chars
is omitted or None, whitespace characters are removed. If given and
not None, chars must be a string; the characters in the string will be
stripped from the beginning of the string this method is called on.

If one wants to remove a leading substring, s[k:] does nicely.
Determining a common prefix to remove is also easy. The following
does what OP expected:

def rempre(s, pre):
'assume len(pre) <= len(s)'
stop = len(pre)
i = 0
while i < stop and s[i] == pre[i]:
i += 1
return s[i:]

rempre(s, 'chg') ' conn' rempre(s, 'chg ')

'conn'

Terry J. Reedy

[Pete Jereb]

Thanks to all for the clarification. I was under the impression that
lstrip would remove a string I specified, not any character in the
string until a character is no longer found. I like the

s.lstrip('chg').lstrip

solution.

This is my first Python program, and between the messages on this
group and "Python in a Nutshell" I've been able to solve all the
problems I've encountered thus far. Hopefully I'll be able to
contribute to this group in a little bit! Pete.

[Jeff Epler]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 10:43:27PM -0400, Jeremy Dillworth wrote:

As an alternative you could use re.sub()

import re
s = 'chg cbonn_fee'
print re.sub('chg ', '', s) cbonn_fee

I'd recommend avoiding regexes if this is all you're doing. Instead,
you can write a function to do it:

def remove_prefix(prefix, s):
"""remove_prefix(prefix, s) -> str
If s starts with prefix, return the part of s remaining after
prefix. Otherwise, return the original string"""
if s.startswith(prefix):
return s[len(prefix):]
return s

for s in ("chg conn_fee", "something else", "chg x", "chg", "chg "):

.... remove_prefix("chg ", s)
....
'conn_fee'
'something else'
'x'
'chg'
''

Jeff

[Peter Hansen]

Terry Reedy wrote:

"Peter Hansen" <pe***@engcorp.com> wrote in message
news:3F***************@engcorp.com...

Does this make any sense at all? where did the lead c in conn_fee

go?

Based on the behaviour you describe, I would assume lstrip()
removes, starting at the beginning of the string, all characters
which are *anywhere* in the argument string you give it, until
it encounters a character not in that string, at which point it
stops.

Good call: from Lib Ref 2.2.6.1 String Methods

lstrip( [chars])

Return a copy of the string with leading characters removed. If chars
is omitted or None, whitespace characters are removed. If given and
not None, chars must be a string; the characters in the string will be
stripped from the beginning of the string this method is called on.

I think that last phrase might be responsible for the OP's confusion.
Even now my brain interprets it as meaning the *string* formed by those
characters will be removed from the beginning of the string, not that
each occurrence of any character in that arg string will be removed
from the target.

-Peter