<s>[INST] How to trim whitespace (including tabs)? Is there a function that will trim not only spaces for whitespace, but also tabs?
 [/INST] Whitespace on the both sides:
s = "  \t a string example\t  "
s = s.strip()

Whitespace on the right side:
s = s.rstrip()

Whitespace on the left side:
s = s.lstrip()

As thedz points out, you can provide an argument to strip arbitrary characters to any of these functions like this:
s = s.strip(' \t\n\r')

This will strip any space, \t, \n, or \r characters from the left-hand side, right-hand side, or both sides of the string. 
The examples above only remove strings from the left-hand and right-hand sides of strings. If you want to also remove characters from the middle of a string, try re.sub:
import re
print re.sub('[\s+]', '', s)

That should print out:
astringexample

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