Python String isspace() explanation with example

What is isspace() :

isspace() is used to check if a string contains all white space characters or not. If your program can’t handle white spaces, this method really comes handy. For example, on your server, you can confirm a string before performing any operation on it.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to use isspace() with different examples.

Syntax of isspace() :

The syntax of isspace() is as below :

str.isspace()

This is an inbuilt method and you don’t need anything to import. str is the string where you are checking for white space.

Return value of isspace() :

isspace() returns a Boolean value. If all characters are whitespace, it will return True, else it will return False.

Whitespace characters :

In python, following characters are considered as a whitespace character :

- ' ' : space
- '\n' : new line
- '\v' : vertical tab
- '\t' : horizontal tab
- '\f' : feed
- '\r' : carriage return

So if the string contains only any of these characters or a subset of these characters, isspace() will return True.

Example python program :

Let’s learn isspace() with a simple example :

str1 = ""
str2 = "Hello"
str3 = "Hello "
str4 = " "
str5 = "\n"
str6 = "\v"
str7 = "\t"
str8 = "\f"
str9 = "\r"
str10 = "\n \r \f"

print("str1 : {}".format(str1.isspace()))
print("str2 : {}".format(str2.isspace()))
print("str3 : {}".format(str3.isspace()))
print("str4 : {}".format(str4.isspace()))
print("str5 : {}".format(str5.isspace()))
print("str6 : {}".format(str6.isspace()))
print("str7 : {}".format(str7.isspace()))
print("str8 : {}".format(str8.isspace()))
print("str9 : {}".format(str9.isspace()))
print("str10 : {}".format(str10.isspace()))

It will print the below output :

str1 : False
str2 : False
str3 : False
str4 : True
str5 : True
str6 : True
str7 : True
str8 : True
str9 : True
str10 : True

As you can see here, the first three strings give False.

The first string is an empty string. It doesn’t have any whitespace.
The second string is not empty but it doesn’t have any whitespace.
The third string has one space but it also contains one word. isspace() returns True only if all are whitespace.

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