os.path.dirname adds unremoveable spaces?

[Michael Geary]

> > ####################################
> > import os, string
> > for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/home/_Comedy'):
> >         for file in files:
> >                 str = os.path.dirname(file)
> >                 print root, str.strip(), "/", file.strip()
> >
> > ####################################
> > The problem is that even after using strip(), it still prints a list
> > like this:
> >
> >
> > /home/_Comedy/ISIRTA  / ISIRTA - 1966.03.28 - s02e03 - Ali Baba.mp3
> > /home/_Comedy/ISIRTA  / ISIRTA - 1966.04.04 - s02e04 - Nelson.mp3
> > /home/_Comedy/ISIRTA  / ISIRTA - 1966.04.18 - s02e06 - Angus Prune.mp3
> >
> >                        ^^^^^
> >                                ^^^^^
> > I can't remove these mystery spaces that I'm pointing to no matter
> > what I try.  Neither the directories or filenames have spaces before
> > or after them.  Even if they did, they should've been removed when I
> > used the strip command.

> And just as expected, after an hour of searching google groups for an
> answer, I post the question only to figure it out 10 seconds later.
> Sheesh!
>
> I used os.path.join and all is well.

Just to add a couple of notes... You probably shouldn't be using the strip()
function at all. What if the directory or filename does have leading or
trailing spaces? Presumably you would want to keep those when constructing a
full path.

Also, you did figure out that it was the print statement adding the spaces,
right? Try this test:

print 'one', '/', 'two'

and compare the results with this:

print '%s/%s' %( 'one', 'two' )

In the second example, you're giving a single argument to the print
statement, a string that you've already formatted with the % operator.

os.path.join is better for dealing with file paths, of course, but this will
be useful for other things you might want to concatenate and format.

-Mike