strip() 2.4.4

[Roy Smith]

In article <1182432181.050589.5800 at n2g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
 Nick <nickjbyrne at gmail.com> wrote:

> strip() isn't working as i expect, am i doing something wrong -
> 
> Sample data in file in.txt:
> 
> 'AF':'AFG':'004':'AFGHANISTAN':'Afghanistan'
> 'AL':'ALB':'008':'ALBANIA':'Albania'
> 'DZ':'DZA':'012':'ALGERIA':'Algeria'
> 'AS':'ASM':'016':'AMERICAN SAMOA':'American Samoa'
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> f1 = open('in.txt', 'r')
> 
> for line in f1:
>     print line.rsplit(':')[4].strip("'"),
> 
> Output:
> 
> Afghanistan'
> Albania'
> Algeria'
> American Samoa'
> 
> Why is there a apostrophe still at the end?

No clue, I can't reproduce it, but here's some ideas to try.

1) It helps to give more information.  Exactly what version of python are 
you using?  Cut-and-paste what python prints out when you start it up 
interactively, i.e.:

Python 2.4 (#1, Jan 17 2005, 14:59:14) 
[GCC 3.3.3 (NetBSD nb3 20040520)] on netbsd2

More than likely, just saying "2.4" would tell people all they need to 
know, but it never hurts to give more info.

2) Try to isolate what's happening.  Is the trailing quote really in the 
string, or is print adding it?  Do something like:

temp = line.rsplit(':')[4].strip("'")
print repr (temp[0])

and see what happens.

3) Are you sure the argument you're giving to strip() is the same character 
that's in the file?  Is it possible the file has non-ascii characters, such 
as "smart quotes"?  Try printing ord(temp[0]) and ord(temp("'")) and see if 
they give you the same value.