Copy whitespace from string to string in Python

Question

I want to copy whitespace like spaces and tabs from string to string in Python 2. For example if I have a string with 3 spaces at first and one tab at the end like " Hi\t" I want to copy those whitespace to another string for example string like "hello" would become " hello\t" Is that possible to do easily?

Yes, using regular expressions. Are you expecting to only take whitespace from the beginning and end of strings? If not, it gets a bit more complicated. — Amani Kilumanga
– Amani Kilumanga, Commented Jul 29, 2016 at 14:13

Delgan · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-29 14:17:26Z

1

Yes, this is of course possible. I would use regex for that.

import re

hi = " Hi\t"
hello = "hello"

spaces = re.match(r"^(\s*).+?(\s*)$", hi)
if spaces:
    left, right = spaces.groups()
    string = "{}{}{}".format(left, hello, right)
    print(string)
    # Out: " hello\t"

edited Jul 29, 2016 at 14:17

answered Jul 29, 2016 at 14:12

Delgan

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2 Comments

jbndlr Over a year ago

The .* in your regex is greedy. To avoid conflicts, you could change the regex to ^(\s*).+?(\s*)$ (i.e. make the mid part lazy).

Delgan Over a year ago

@jbndlr Indeed, big mistake. Thank you!

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