Converting a string, removing special characters and replacing

Question

I need to convert my string so that it is made into a special format

ex:

string = "the cow's milk is a-okay!"

converted string = "the-cows-milk-is-a-okay"

This maybe `'-'.join(s.split())`, but your symbol removal requirement makes it vague — Moses Koledoye, Nov 10 '16 at 16:13
Look at [String slugification in Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5574042/string-slugification-in-python) — vishes_shell, Nov 10 '16 at 16:15
Its good that you need something but can you tell us what have you done/tried on doing it? Don't just come here asking us to do your work. We are here to help you solve problems not to write all the code for you. — , Nov 10 '16 at 16:15
My first idea was make the string into a list by separated by spaces. Then It was removing the special characters in each element of the list. Finally joining the list into a string again with "-" in between elements — James B Lee, Nov 10 '16 at 16:25

Alex Hall · Answer 1 · 2016-11-10T16:15:46.713

0

import re

s = "the cow's milk is a-okay!"
s = re.sub(r'[^a-zA-Z\s-]+', '', s)  # remove anything that isn't a letter, space, or hyphen
s = re.sub(r'\s+', '-', s)  # replace all spaces with hyphens
print(s)   # the-cows-milk-is-a-okay

Here a 'space' is any whitespace character including tabs and newlines. To change this, replace \s with the actual space character .

Runs of multiple spaces will be replaced by a single hyphen. To change this, remove the + in the second call to re.sub.

edited Nov 10 '16 at 16:15

answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:13

Alex Hall

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Would `\W+` be better? – OneCricketeer Nov 10 '16 at 16:15
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@cricket_007 no, that wouldn't be correct for spaces, hyphens, or underscores. – Alex Hall Nov 10 '16 at 16:17
@AlexHall Thank you so much! I really have to study this re more. – James B Lee Nov 10 '16 at 16:30
@AlexHall just erased the hyphen on the second line because my original string had a " - " not "-", and it started to replace the strings with "---" haha would not have found this without you. Thanks – James B Lee Nov 10 '16 at 16:32

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:28

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How about this (the drawback is unable to remain the hyphen -),

import string

s = "the cow's milk is a-okay!"

table = string.maketrans(" ", "-") 
new_s = s.translate(table, string.punctuation)  

print(new_s)
# the-cows-milk-is-aokay

answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:28

SparkAndShine

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This is not what the OP wanted. Ironically, you acknowledge that in your answer. – Christian Dean Nov 10 '16 at 17:03

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:31

>>> string = "the cow's milk is a-okay!"
>>> string
"the cow's milk is a-okay!"
>>> string = string.replace(' ','-')
>>> for char in string:
...     if char in "?.!:;/'":
...             string = string.replace(char,'')
...
>>> string
'the-cows-milk-is-a-okay'

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:55

0

A simple generator expression could be used to accomplish this:

>>> s = "the cow's milk is a-okay!"
>>> ''.join(('-' if el == " " else el if el not in "?.!:;/'" else "" for el in s))
'the-cows-milk-is-a-okay'
>>>

answered Nov 10 '16 at 16:55

Christian Dean

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Converting a string, removing special characters and replacing

4 Answers4