Removing empty strings from a list in python

Question

I need to split a string. I am using this:

def ParseStringFile(string):
p = re.compile('\W+')
result = p.split(string)

But I have an error: my result has two empty strings (''), one before 'Лев'. How do I get rid of them?

Answer 1

As nhahtdh pointed out, the empty string is expected since there's a \n at the start and end of the string, but if they bother you, you can filter them very quickly and efficiently.

>>> filter(None, ['', 'text', 'more text', ''])
['text', 'more text']

filter usually takes a callable function as first argument and creates a list with all elements removed for which function(element) returns False. Here None is given, which triggers a special case: The element is removed if bool(element) is false. As bool('') is false, it gets removed.

Also see the manual.