Guess what this does

gistfile1.py

def func(lines):
    first_pass = list()
    #now clean any preceding whitespace
    for index, line in enumerate(lines):
        table = string.maketrans(string.whitespace, ' ' * len(string.whitespace))
        first_pass.append(string.translate(line, table))

    clean = list()

    for line in first_pass:
        c = line.replace('\n', '') 
        if c != '' and len(c) > 1:
            count = 0 
            for char in c: #if the line isn't totally blank, add it.
                if char != ' ':
                    count += 1
                if count > 1:
                    clean.append(c)
                    break

    for index, line in enumerate(clean):
        white_chars = 0 
        for char in line:
            if char == ' ':
                white_chars += 1
            else:
                line = line[white_chars:]
                break

        i = len(line)
        count = 0 
        while i > 0: #clean trailing whitespace.
            if line[i - 1] == ' ':
                count -= 1
            else:
                if count != 0:
                    line = line[:count]
                    break
            i -= 1

        #last but not least, remove any ';' characters from the end
        if line[len(line) - 1] == ';':
            line = line[:-1]

        clean[index] = line

    #this is to fix windows dropping bytes on the front of the file.
    if clean[0].startswith(codecs.BOM_UTF8):
        clean[0] = clean[0].replace(codecs.BOM_UTF8, '') 

    return clean

A+