Python: most idiomatic way to convert None to empty string?

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Chapters
00:00 Question
00:43 Accepted answer (Score 114)
01:02 Answer 2 (Score 209)
01:25 Answer 3 (Score 168)
01:35 Answer 4 (Score 104)
01:52 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1034...

Answer 1 links:
[Boolean Operators]: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes....

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Tags
#string #python #idioms

#avk47

ANSWER 1

Score 176

def xstr(s):
    return '' if s is None else str(s)

ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 118

If you actually want your function to behave like the str() built-in, but return an empty string when the argument is None, do this:

def xstr(s):
    if s is None:
        return ''
    return str(s)

ANSWER 3

Score 108

If you know that the value will always either be a string or None:

xstr = lambda s: s or ""

print xstr("a") + xstr("b") # -> 'ab'
print xstr("a") + xstr(None) # -> 'a'
print xstr(None) + xstr("b") # -> 'b'
print xstr(None) + xstr(None) # -> ''

ANSWER 4

Score 70

return s or '' will work just fine for your stated problem!