I'd like to replace " and -
with "" nothing! make it disappear.
s = re.sub(r'[^\w\s]', '', s) this makes all punctuation disappear, but I just want those 2 characters. Thanks.
views:
192answers:
5
+6
A:
I'm curious as to why you are using a regular expression for this simple string replacement. The only advantage that I can see is that you can do it in one line of code instead of two, but I personally think that a replacement method is clearer than a regex for something like this.
The string object has a replace method - str.replace(old, new[, count]), so use replace("-", "") and replace("\"", "").
Note that my syntax might be a little off - I'm still a python beginner.
Thomas Owens
2009-10-09 20:28:31
Probably because it was the accepted answer to his previous question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1545655/how-do-i-replace-all-punctuation-in-my-string-with-in-python/1545678#1545678
Fred Larson
2009-10-09 20:32:57
or may be because he needs to replace multiple characters
SilentGhost
2009-10-09 20:34:34
@Thomas: that'd be very slow
SilentGhost
2009-10-09 20:35:14
SilentGhost, like I said, it's only two characters. To me, a regex would be more confusing when used in that situation.
Thomas Owens
2009-10-09 20:35:45
And yes, it would be slower for large strings. And probably not Pythonic. If I had to remove more than 2 or 3 characters, I would use a regex.
Thomas Owens
2009-10-09 20:36:26
A:
In Python 2.6:
print 'Hey -- How are "you"?'.translate(None, '-"')
Returns:
Hey How are you?
Nick Presta
2009-10-09 20:34:21
+2
A:
In Python 2.6/2.7, you can use the helpful translate() method on strings. When using None as the first argument, this method has the special behavior of deleting all occurences of any character in the second argument.
>>> s = 'No- dashes or "quotes"'
>>> s.translate(None, '"-')
'No dashes or quotes'
Per SilentGhost's comment, this gets to be cumbersome pretty quickly in both <2.6 and >=3.0, because you have to explicitly create a translation table. That effort would only be worth it if you are performing this sort of operation a great deal.
Triptych
2009-10-09 20:35:13