pretty strange behavior of "strip"

[MRAB]

Guy Doune wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> Could it be a bug?????
> 
> Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jul 31 2008, 17:28:52)
> [GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>  >>> test=['03.html', '06.html', 'questions.html', '04.html', 
> 'toc.html', '01.html', '05.html', '07.html', '02.html', '08.html']
>  >>> test
> ['03.html', '06.html', 'questions.html', '04.html', 'toc.html', 
> '01.html', '05.html', '07.html', '02.html', '08.html']
>  >>> test[4]
> 'toc.html'
>  >>> test[4].strip('.html')
> 'oc'
> 
> Can't figure out what is going on, really.
> 
It's not a bug. strip() treats its argument as a _set_ of characters and 
strips any of those characters from both ends of the string. lstrip() 
strips only the left-hand end and rstrip() strips only the right-hand end.