Replacing white space inside a list of strings in python

Question

I'm trying to find a really simple way of removing the white space in a list of strings. For I want to turn the list age:

age = ['15', '23 years', '21']

into

age = ['15', '23years', '21']

Notice how the space between '23' and 'years' was removed? I'm not sure why my if statement below doesn't work:

for x in age:
     x.replace(" ", "")

What am I missing here? I took a step back and tried to remove the whitespace from a simple string:

test = 'hi hi hi'

and the following code works for removing the whitespace:

test.replace(" ", "")

returning this when 'test is called:

'hihihi'

So why can't I just add a for loop to iterate over a list of strings and remove the whitespace like I did above? What code would allow me to solve my problem?

Thanks for your help!

`replace` doesn't change the string, it only returns new one. — Maroun, Nov 02 '15 at 16:11
@jonrsharpe we should probably consider questions like this one a dupe of the one you've linked. — alecxe, Nov 02 '15 at 16:13
@alecxe we certainly should - I'd vote as such if I had any votes left! — jonrsharpe, Nov 02 '15 at 16:13

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 02 '15 at 16:12

5

You need to modify the list, as str objects are immutable:

age = [x.replace(" ", "") for x in age]

answered Nov 02 '15 at 16:12

Sebastian Wozny

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Replacing white space inside a list of strings in python

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