Why do I require an "elif" statement here?

[Jim]

Good stuff!
Since I'm only interested in spaces being my only whitespace it makes
sense for me to use "line.lstrip(whitespace)" in my script, thus
eliminating the "elif char == '\n':" statement.
Thanks,
Jim

Tim Chase wrote:
> > Hard to believe that lstrip() produces an empty string on lines with
> > just spaces and doesn't remove the '\n'  with lines that have
> > characters.
>
> It's easy to understand that lstrip() is doing exactly what it's
> supposed to.  It evaluates from the left of your string,
> discarding whitespace (spaces, tabs, and cr/lf characters) until
> it hits a non-whitespace character or the end of the string.
> When there's no non-whitespace, it returns an empty string.
>
> If you wanted to remove the \n from the right of lines, there was
> an earlier discussion on the list where someone (Bruno?) and I
> went back and forth and I think we finally decided that the
> "best" solution was
>
> 	s.rstrip('\n')
>
> which had the fewest side-effects.
>
> However, when you use the output.write() method, you'd then have
> to add the \n back in to make sure it ended up in the output stream.
>
> If you wanted to continue to use lstrip(), you could also just
> ensure that you're only stripping spaces (chr(0x20)) by using
>
> 	s.lstrip(' ')
>
> This would leave \t and \n characters unmolested.
>
> More info can be found at
>
> 	>>> help("".lstrip)
> 	>>> help("".rstrip)
> 	>>> help("".strip)
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> -tkc