I have several alphanumeric strings like these

listOfNum = ['000231512-n','1209123100000-n00000','alphanumeric0000', '000alphanumeric']

The desired output for removing trailing zeros would be:

listOfNum = ['000231512-n','1209123100000-n','alphanumeric', '000alphanumeric']

The desired output for leading trailing zeros would be:

listOfNum = ['231512-n','1209123100000-n00000','alphanumeric0000', 'alphanumeric']

The desire output for removing both leading and trailing zeros would be:

listOfNum = ['231512-n','1209123100000-n', 'alphanumeric', 'alphanumeric']

For now i've been doing it the following way, please suggest a better way if there is:

listOfNum = ['000231512-n','1209123100000-n00000','alphanumeric0000', \
'000alphanumeric']
trailingremoved = []
leadingremoved = []
bothremoved = []

# Remove trailing
for i in listOfNum:
  while i[-1] == "0":
    i = i[:-1]
  trailingremoved.append(i)

# Remove leading
for i in listOfNum:
  while i[0] == "0":
    i = i[1:]
  leadingremoved.append(i)

# Remove both
for i in listOfNum:
  while i[0] == "0":
    i = i[1:]
  while i[-1] == "0":
    i = i[:-1]
  bothremoved.append(i)

What about a basic

your_string.strip("0")

to remove both trailing and leading zeros ? If you're only interested in removing trailing zeros, use .rstrip instead (and .lstrip for only the leading ones).

More info in the doc.

You could use some list comprehension to get the sequences you want like so:

trailing_removed = [s.rstrip("0") for s in listOfNum]
leading_removed = [s.lstrip("0") for s in listOfNum]
both_removed = [s.strip("0") for s in listOfNum]