Add trailing space to list of strings

Question

I have a list of strings like this:

my_list = ['Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,', 'consectetur adipiscing elit. ', 'Mauris id enim nisi, ullamcorper malesuada magna.']

I want to basically combine these items into one readable string. My logic is as follows:

If the list item does not end with a space, add one
otherwise, leave it alone
Then combine them all into one string.

I was able to accomplish this a few different ways.

Using a list comprehension:

message = ["%s " % x if not x.endswith(' ') else x for x in my_list]
messageStr = ''.join(message)

Spelling it out (I think this is a bit more readable):

for i, v in enumerate(my_list):
    if not v.endswith(' '):
        my_list[i] = "%s " % v
messageStr = ''.join(my_list)

My question is, is there an easier, "more sane" way of accomplishing this?

Well, it's not exactly insane per se, but I could tell I was making things more difficult. Luckily Nolen found a good solution. — Nitzle
– Nitzle, Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 0:16

Nolen Royalty · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-03 00:15:40Z

5

>>> my_list = ['Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,', 'consectetur adipiscing elit. ', 'Mauris id en
im nisi, ullamcorper malesuada magna.']
>>> ' '.join(string.strip() for string in my_list)
'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris id enim nisi, ullamcorper
 malesuada magna.'

edited Apr 3, 2012 at 0:15

answered Apr 3, 2012 at 0:03

Nolen Royalty

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5 Comments

Nitzle Over a year ago

Thank you! That makes a lot more sense. One question, why use rstrip() instead of strip()?

Nolen Royalty Over a year ago

I originally used strip, but you had said that you were dealing with strings that "ended" in a space so I figured we only needed to strip off spaces on the right side / I didn't want to remove spaces on the left that were important. If I was wrong I'll gladly change it to strip.

Nitzle Over a year ago

In my script, I am getting these strings from a database (each row has part of the message). From what I've seen so far, the data is all kinds of messy. I think I'll be safe and use strip(), since the join should take care of spacing out the sentences after strip().

John La Rooy Over a year ago

You should use a generator expression instead of a list comprehension to avoid making the temporary list. Just leave the [] out of the join

Nolen Royalty Over a year ago

Reverted back to strip. Thanks for the tip @gnibbler, you are always on top of these things :D

Graham King · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-03 00:05:45Z

1

You could simply the list comprehension a little by using strip:

' '.join([x.strip() for x in list])

It's also best not to call your list "list" as that is a built-in.

answered Apr 3, 2012 at 0:05

Graham King

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1 Comment

Nitzle Over a year ago

Good idea, I've changed the variable name in my original question. Thanks.

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