How To Remove Spaces From String In Python?

As a Python developer working on a project for one of my clients, I had a requirement to remove space from a string in Python. After reaching various methods, I found five effective methods to achieve this task. In this tutorial, I will explain all the methods with suitable examples.

Table of Contents

Remove Spaces from String in Python

Let us see some important methods to remove spaces from a string in Python.

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1. Use the str.replace() Method

The str.replace() method is a simple way to remove all spaces from a string. This method replaces occurrences of a specified substring with another substring.

Example:

address = "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW"
clean_address = address.replace(" ", "")
print(clean_address)

Output:

1600PennsylvaniaAvenueNW

In the screenshot below you can see the executed example code with the output.

In this example, we remove all spaces from the address of the White House.

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2. Use str.split() and str.join() Methods

Another effective method is to use str.split() to split the string into a list of words and then str.join() to concatenate them back together without spaces.

Example:

city_name = "New York City"
clean_city_name = "".join(city_name.split())
print(clean_city_name)

Output:

NewYorkCity

In the screenshot below you can see the executed example code with the output.

How to Remove Spaces from String in Python

This method first splits the string “New York City” into a list ['New', 'York', 'City'] and then joins it back into “NewYorkCity”.

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3. Use Regular Expressions

For more complex scenarios, you can use the re module to remove all whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, newlines).

Example:

import re

sentence = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
clean_sentence = re.sub(r'\s+', '', sentence)
print(clean_sentence)

Output:

Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog

In the screenshot below you can see the executed example code with the output.

In this example, the regular expression \s+ matches any whitespace character and re.sub() replaces them with an empty string.

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4. Use str.strip(), str.lstrip(), and str.rstrip() Methods

These methods are useful for removing leading and trailing spaces from a string. While they don’t remove spaces within the string, they are handy for cleaning up user input.

Example:

name = "  John Doe  "
clean_name = name.strip()
print(f"'{clean_name}'")

Output:

'John Doe'

Here, strip() removes the spaces at the beginning and end of the string.

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5. Use the str.translate() Method

The str.translate() method can be used with str.maketrans() to remove spaces.

Example:

state_name = "California Republic"
clean_state_name = state_name.translate(str.maketrans('', '', ' '))
print(clean_state_name)

Output:

CaliforniaRepublic

This method creates a translation table that maps spaces to None, effectively removing them.

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Conclusion

In this tutorial, we explored several methods to remove spaces from string in Python, including str.replace() method, str.split() and str.join() method, regular expressions, str.strip(), str.lstrip() and st.rstrip() methods, and str.translate() method with examples.