I have a string with which i want to replace any character that isn't a standard character or number such as [a-z or 0-9] with an asterisk. For example, "h^&ell`.,|o w]{+orld" is replaced with "h*ell*o*w*orld". Note that multiple characters such as "^&" get replaced with one asterisk. How would I go about doing this?
nneonneo
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asked Oct 20, 2012 at 5:10
2
Regex to the rescue!
import re
s = re.sub['[^0-9a-zA-Z]+', '*', s]
Example:
>>> re.sub['[^0-9a-zA-Z]+', '*', 'h^&ell`.,|o w]{+orld']
'h*ell*o*w*orld'
answered Oct 20, 2012 at 5:11
nneonneonneonneo
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The pythonic way.
print "".join[[ c if c.isalnum[] else "*" for c in s ]]
This doesn't deal with grouping multiple consecutive non-matching characters though, i.e.
"h^&i => "h**i not
"h*i" as in the regex solutions.
crizCraig
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answered Feb 28, 2014 at 13:27
baloanbaloan
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Try:
s = filter[str.isalnum, s]
in Python3:
s = ''.join[filter[str.isalnum, s]]
Edit: realized that the OP wants to replace non-chars with '*'. My answer does not fit
answered Jan 5, 2015 at 5:15
DonDon
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Use \W which is equivalent to [^a-zA-Z0-9_]. Check the documentation, //docs.python.org/2/library/re.html
import re
s = 'h^&ell`.,|o w]{+orld'
replaced_string = re.sub[r'\W+', '*', s]
output: 'h*ell*o*w*orld'
update: This solution will exclude underscore as well. If you want only alphabets and numbers to be excluded, then solution by nneonneo is more appropriate.
Csaba Toth
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answered Aug 12, 2016 at 18:54
psunpsun
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