title: How can I remove extra whitespace from strings when parsing a csv file in Pandas?
body: <p>I have the following file named 'data.csv':</p>
  
  <pre><code>    1997,Ford,E350
      1997, Ford , E350
      1997,Ford,E350,"Super, luxurious truck"
      1997,Ford,E350,"Super ""luxurious"" truck"
      1997,Ford,E350," Super luxurious truck "
      "1997",Ford,E350
      1997,Ford,E350
      2000,Mercury,Cougar
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I would like to parse it into a pandas DataFrame so that the DataFrame looks as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>       Year     Make   Model              Description
      0  1997     Ford    E350                     None
      1  1997     Ford    E350                     None
      2  1997     Ford    E350   Super, luxurious truck
      3  1997     Ford    E350  Super "luxurious" truck
      4  1997     Ford    E350    Super luxurious truck
      5  1997     Ford    E350                     None
      6  1997     Ford    E350                     None
      7  2000  Mercury  Cougar                     None
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The best I could do was:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    pd.read_table("data.csv", sep=r',', names=["Year", "Make", "Model", "Description"])
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which gets me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    Year     Make   Model              Description
   0  1997     Ford    E350                     None
   1  1997    Ford     E350                     None
   2  1997     Ford    E350   Super, luxurious truck
   3  1997     Ford    E350  Super "luxurious" truck
   4  1997     Ford    E350   Super luxurious truck 
   5  1997     Ford    E350                     None
   6  1997     Ford    E350                     None
   7  2000  Mercury  Cougar                     None
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I get the DataFrame without those whitespaces?</p>