Python supports powerful regular expressions for editing text. This is useful for eliminating unwanted spaces and tabs (also known as whitespace) and for other types of editing operations.

For example, the following example removes any whitespace padding within a text field:

import re

value = re.sub('[ \t]+', ' ', value)

For example, a string like this:

|This              is    a    widely      spaced       out       string|

becomes

|This is a widely spaced out string|

	For more information on using regular expressions in Python, see Pattern Matching in Strings.