Removing newline from a textfile

Question

Say I have a text file like this (test.txt):

This is a 

test

my python code:

f = open("test.txt")
x = f.readlines()
s = []

for i in x:
    k = i.replace("a","not a")
    s.append(k)
    with open('output.txt', 'w') as a:
        a.write("  ".join(s))

gives the following (output.txt):

This is not a 
  
  test

but I do not want the whitespace in between. I want something like this:

This is not a test

How can I remove the newline?

You want to remove the newline, not whitespace. The title is misleading you might want to [edit] that. — Ch3steR, Oct 10 '21 at 13:26
You have newlines at the end of each line, see the duplicate for ways to remove them. As a side note, you should really use more meaningful variable names, this would make your code easier to read. — Thierry Lathuille, Oct 10 '21 at 13:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 10 '21 at 13:30

Join each line immediately, then split the whole string on whitespace. Then you should have words you can loop over and replace, then join back together

replacements = {"a" : "not a"} 
def replace(s):
    if s in replacements:
        return replacements[s]
    return s

with open("test.txt") as f:
    x = " ".join(l.strip() for l in f)
x = x.split()
print(" ".join(replace(s) for s in x))

Removing newline from a textfile

1 Answers1