String.strip() in Python

Question

While learning about python, I came upon this code, which takes a text file, splits each line into an array, and inserts it into a custom dictionary, where the array[0] is the key and array[1] is the value:

my_dict = {} 

infile = open("file.txt") 

for line in infile: 

#line = line.strip() 

#parts = [p.strip() for p in line.split("\t")] 

parts = [p for p in line.split("\t")]

my_dict[parts[0]] = parts[1] 

print line 

for key in my_dict: 

print "key: " + key + "\t" + "value " + my_dict[key]

I ran the program with the commented lines off and on and I got the same result. (of course, replacing the second commented line with the line below it).It seems to me that doing a strip() is optional. Is it better practice to leave it in?

Answer 1

In, Python String.strip() with no arguments removes all whitespace at the start and end, including spaces, tabs, newlines and carriage returns. 

For example, by using .strip(), the following two lines in a file would lead to the same end result:

foo\tbar \n foo\tbar\n

To know more about this you can have a look at the following video tutorial:-