Pythonic way to trim and keep leading and trailing whitespace

[Martin P. Hellwig]

On 03/23/10 23:38, Tim Chase wrote:
<cut>
> Just in case you're okay with a regexp solution, you can use
>
>  >>> s = "\t\tabc def "
>  >>> import re
>  >>> r = re.compile(r'^(\s*)(.*?)(\s*)$')
>  >>> m = re.match(s)
>  >>> m.groups()
> ('\t\t', 'abc def', ' ')
>  >>> leading, text, trailing = m.groups()
<cut>
Ahhh regex, the hammer, Swiss Army Knife, cable tie, duct tape, 
superglue and soldering iron, all wrapped in one*. Mastery of it will 
enable you to drive the nails in your coffin at an incomparable speed. :-)

*Yes I was a sysadmin, why do you ask?
-- 
mph