Question

I have the following code:

url = 'abcdc.com'
print(url.strip('.com'))

I expected: abcdc

I got: abcd

Now I do

url.rsplit('.com', 1)

Is there a better way?

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_{See How do the .strip/.rstrip/.lstrip string methods work in Python? for a specific explanation of what the first attempt is doing.}

Answer 1

strip doesn’t mean "remove this substring". x.strip(y) treats y as a set of characters and strips any characters in that set from both ends of x.

On Python 3.9 and newer you can use the removeprefix and removesuffix methods to remove an entire substring from either side of the string:

url = 'abcdc.com'
url.removesuffix('.com')    # Returns 'abcdc'
url.removeprefix('abcdc.')  # Returns 'com'

The relevant Python Enhancement Proposal is PEP-616.

On Python 3.8 and older you can use endswith and slicing:

url = 'abcdc.com'
if url.endswith('.com'):
    url = url[:-4]

Or a regular expression:

import re
url = 'abcdc.com'
url = re.sub('\.com$', '', url)