How to strip all whitespace from string

Kiss Special Whitespaces Goodbye with Regex

Occasionally, you'll want to remove other white characters (like tab \t, newline \n, etc). Good news! Regex is your Swiss army knife for this:

import re
squeaky_clean_string = re.sub(r'\s+', '', "your string")
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This will deal with standard and Unicode whitespace like a ninja. Remember, \s is your go-to guy for wide range of Unicode whitespace characters.

Be Smart: Precompile your Regex Expressions

Planning to knock out whitespaces in a loop or repetitively in your code? Here's a pro tip:

1. Compile the regex pattern first

   pattern = re.compile(r'\s+')
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2. Then, use the pattern's sub() method to replace the whitespace:

   without_ws = pattern.sub('', "your string")  # Karate chop those whitespaces out!
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By precompiling the regex, you're basically giving Python a map — so it doesn't get lost (and slow) re-reading directions each time.

For the Tricky Buggers: Translations and Unicode

Stumble upon not only spaces, but Unicode oddities like zero-width spaces (\u200B) or ideographic spaces? Say hello to str.translate():

Python 3.x:

table = str.maketrans('', '', string.whitespace)
cleaned_string = "your string".translate(table)  # Mutated "your string" into "yourstring"
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Python 2.x:

import string
cleaned_string = "your string".translate(None, string.whitespace)  # Old but gold
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This method furnishes a translation table and strips specified characters efficiently — like a veteran space hunter.

Need a surgical strike? Custom Whitespace Handling

Sometimes, whitespaces are like unwanted guests. You might want to keep some, remove some. strip(), replace(), and regex can come up with a custom cleaning plan:

• Use strip() for your door policy: No leading and trailing spaces allowed.
• Deploy replace() for interior maintenance: Remove spaces inside.
• Regex is your ceremony planner: When you want to remove combinations of whitespaces with a rule.

Preparing for the Unexpected

• David Vs Goliath: Large strings can be heavy on memory usage. Be careful with operations creating string copies.
• Lost in Translation: Beyond simple ASCII whitespace, you may encounter the wide world of Unicode whitespace.
• Performance Anxiety: Working with large datasets? Choose methods that won't get stage fright with huge input.