strip can be used to remove whitespace. Take for example this script.

#!/usr/bin/python
foo = "    Hello World     "
print("'"+foo+"'")

The following should be printed, showing whitespace to the left and right.

'    Hello World     '

Here is how strip can be used.

#!/usr/bin/python
foo = "    Hello World     "
foo = foo.strip()
print("'"+foo+"'")

Should produce the following, with the whitespace to the left and right removed.

'Hello World'

Or lstrip, to only remove whitespace to the left.

#!/usr/bin/python
foo = "    Hello World     "
foo = foo.lstrip()
print("'"+foo+"'")

Which should print the following.

'Hello World     '

Or rstrip, to only remove whitespace to the right.

#!/usr/bin/python
foo = "    Hello World     "
foo = foo.rstrip()
print("'"+foo+"'")

Which should print the following.

'    Hello World'

If you want to remove whitespace in a string, re.sub can be used, for example, to update a phone number to have no whitespace.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import re

phone = "1(414) 744  0107"

phone = phone.strip()
phone = re.sub('\s', '', phone)
phone = re.sub('\(', '', phone)
phone = re.sub('\)', '', phone)