@staticmethod
def _clean_string(s: str) ->str:
    """
        Simply remove any leading and trailing spaces and punctuation.

        Parameters
        ----------
        s: str
            The string to be cleaned.

        Returns
        -------
        cleaned: str
            The cleaned string that has had leading and trailing spaces and punctuation removed.
        """
    s = s.replace('\n', '')
    s = s.replace('\t', '')
    s = s.replace('\xa0', '')
    if s[0] == ' ':
        s = s[1:]
    if s[-1] == ' ':
        s = s[:-1]
    if s[-1] == '.':
        s = s[:-1]
    return s
