title: Removing empty strings from a re.findall command
body: <pre><code>import re
  name = 'propane'
  a = []
  Alkane = re.findall('(\d+\W+)*(methyl|ethyl|propyl|butyl)*(meth|eth|prop|but|pent|hex)(ane)', name)
  if Alkane != a:
      print(Alkane)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As you can see when the regular express takes in propane it will output two empty strings. </p>
  
  <pre><code>[('', '', 'prop', 'ane')]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>For these types of inputs, I want to remove the empty strings from the output. I don't know what kind of form this output is in though, it doesn't look like a regular list. </p>