[Python-ideas] New explicit methods to trim strings

[Dan Sommers]

On 3/24/19 6:45 PM, Cameron Simpson wrote:

> Like others I'm against the name 'trim" itself because of PHP's homonym
> which means what "strip" means in Python (and therefore doesn't mean
> what "trim" is proposed to mean here). "clip"?
> 
> I'm +0.9 rather than +1 entirely because the operation feels so...
> trivial, which usually trips the "not everything needs a method"
> argument.  But it is also very common.

strip, trim, chop, chomp, clip, left, right, and various
permutations with leading "l"s and "r"s.  Is the "other"
argument a character, a string, or a list of characters, or
a list of strings, or a regex?  Argh.

Maybe I use too many languages and I don't do enough string
processing, but I always have to look this stuff up every
time I use it, or I just write my own.  No, I don't have a
solution, but matching or mismatching any particular
language only makes sense if you happen to be familiar with
that language's string functions.  And then someone will
fall into a trap because "their" language handles newlines
and returns, or spaces and tabs, or some other detail
completely differently.

That said, I'm all for more library functions, especially in
cases like this that are easy to get wrong.