Removing whitespace from a list in python

Question

I am currently making a cipher program in python but I can't seem to solve this one problem:

word = ['a', 'b', 'c']
-----enciphering process-------
message = ['d', 'e', 'f']

print message[x],

What I want to happen:

'def'

What actually happens:

'd e f'

I know why the spaces are there, but I can't seem to get rid of them, I've tried using strip, replace, re.sub, message(map whatever I don't remember), and "".join. Those all work with a pre-determined list but not when I don't know what the list is going to be.

Help please.

*EDIT

What I meant was something like this:

Word = raw_input("Enter a word  ")
Message = list(word)

w = raw_input("Enter a number  ")
w = int(w)
n = len(message)

Letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd' and so on until z]

For y in range(0,n):

   For index in range(0,26):

      X = index + w

      If x > 25:
         x = x - 26

      If message[y] == letters[index]:
         print letters[x],

Not sure how to get rid of the spaces because I don't know what the message is gonna be

Can we see what exactly you have tried? I feel like all those are good options. — squiguy, Mar 31 '13 at 07:34

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 31 '13 at 07:34

5

print message[x], prints the character message[x], then a space (technically, a "virtual" space that gets turned into a space by the next print statement). If you call it in a loop, you will get d e f.

Instead, print ''.join(message).

answered Mar 31 '13 at 07:34

nneonneo

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`sys.stdout.write()` is another option. It probably won't make a difference here, but if `len(message)` were enormous, this approach may speed up processing time. – jedwards Mar 31 '13 at 07:40

Old Pro · Answer 2 · 2013-03-31T07:51:23.467

1

Hard to tell what is not working for you. Here's how it looks in interactive python:

>>> message = ['d', 'e', 'f']
>>> print message
['d', 'e', 'f']
>>> print "".join(message)
def
>>> import sys
>>> sys.stdout.writelines(message)
def>>>

Lines beginning with >>> are statements, other lines are output. The last line is def with no newline, followed by the >>> input prompt.

edited Mar 31 '13 at 07:51

answered Mar 31 '13 at 07:39

Old Pro

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 31 '13 at 11:27

0

quick answer is

import sys
# ...
sys.stdout.write(letters[x])

but you have a problem in how you structure your code

you want to encode a message you should apply your encoding function to that message for example

word="Hello"
encoded=''.join(map(lambda i: chr(ord(i) ^ 13), word))
print encoded

answered Mar 31 '13 at 11:27

Muayyad Alsadi

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I would try all of your suggestions, but I have no idea what map does, lambda, or sys.stdout does. But thank you all for the help. – user2228761 Mar 31 '13 at 18:19
sys.stdout is the system standard output (it's a file object you can write directly to it). lambda is in short an anonymous function (defined inline in one line that only returns a value) maps loops over elements and pass them to the passed function (the lambda in our case) – Muayyad Alsadi Apr 02 '13 at 06:52

Removing whitespace from a list in python

3 Answers3