CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Bryan
Bryan

Reputation: 11

Can't seem to remove all empty strings and blank strings from a list?

I have a long list of information scraped from the Billboard Hot 100 page which I am trying to distill into just songs and artists. However, I can't seem to remove all the empty parts as well as points in the list that are just blank spaces. '' and ' '

I have tried everything I can find on here with regards to the filter function as well as other options people have suggested. My initial attempt was using the included code, which worked for the first part of the list but for some reason never finishes and always stops part way. 

for y in parse:
    if y == "":
        parse.remove("")
    elif y == " ":
        parse.remove(" ")

I would expect to be receiving a list with no '' or ' ' by themselves, but only the first part of the list is affected.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 104

Answers (4)

DirtyBit
DirtyBit

Reputation: 16772

Using filter with str.strip:

parse = ['a', ' ', 'b', 'c', '', 'd']

Python 2.x:

print(filter(str.strip, parse))

Python 3.x:

print(list(filter(str.strip, parse)))

OUTPUT:

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

EDIT:

To remove the empty spaces within the elements, let's say:

parse = ['a ', ' ', ' b', 'c', '', 'd ']

Using map() with filter and str.strip:

Python 2.x:

print(map(str.strip, filter(str.strip, parse)))

Python 3.x:

print(list(map(str.strip, filter(str.strip, parse))))

OUTPUT:

['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

Upvotes: 2

Frenchy
Frenchy

Reputation: 16997

you could use:

list1 = ["1 ", "", " ", "3", "  4", "       ",""]
list2 = [x for x in list1 if x.strip() ]

output list2:

['1 ', '3', '  4']

Upvotes: 0

accdias
accdias

Reputation: 5372

This will do the job:

>>> dirty =['1',' ', '', '2','3','4']
>>> clean = [row for row in dirty if row.strip()]
>>> clean
['1', '2', '3', '4']
>>>

Upvotes: 4

SuperStew
SuperStew

Reputation: 3054

Dont modify the list you are iterating over.

Assuming parse is like 

parse=[1,' ', '', 2,3,4]

you can do something like 

parse_fix=[]
for y in parse:
    if y!='' and y!=' ': parse_fix.append(y)

then parse_fix will be the list you want

the short version might look like this

parse=[y for y in parse if y!='' and y!=' ']

Upvotes: 1

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