How to delete u'\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n' and u'\xa0' from a python list

Question

I have been struggling for two days but can not figure it out. Here is my code :

def find_name():
    i = 0 
    while i != len(links):
        url = links[i]
        r = requests.get(url)
        html = r.content
        soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
        for n in soup.find_all('tr'):
            td = n.find('td')
            if td: 
                last_name.append(td.text)
        i = i+1 
    del last_name[0:5]
    return last_name

It generates a list of Last names, but there are multiple u'\\xa0' and '/ u'\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n in the list I want them gone. I tried everything I knew. Like removing it by checking each element but that gives me value error list.remove(x): x not in list , I also tried to compare each element to - u'\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n' and then add to the list. But it did not work. There are other questions on stackoverflow but they all talk about the string.

Answer 1

You could call str.strip() on the text before adding it to the last_name list.

          if td and td.text.strip(): 
              last_name.append(td.text)

Answer 2

You could use a list comprehension and the strip method:

# Your code
last_name = [name for name in last_name if name.strip()]
return last_name