Chopping off spaces at both ends

[Madhusudan Singh]

Hi

        I am a newbie to python and am using it to interface some of my lab
equipment.

        How does one get rid of spaces at both ends of a string ? A little like the
trim() intrinsic in fortran 95.

        One of my instruments is returning a string that has one or more blanks in
it, and that is complicating string matching tests in one of my functions.

Thanks.