CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonregex
Mozbi
Mozbi

Reputation: 1479

Python Regex sub on single character

Is there a way to perform a sub on only one character of a matching pattern?

For example, if I have the string

"This is a word. This is another word. H.E. Stein"

and I want to perform a sub on just the '.'s at the end of a sentence so it becomes

"This is a word This is another word H.E. Stein"

How should I go about doing this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2756

Answers (1)

falsetru
falsetru

Reputation: 369134

You don't need to use regular expression:

>>> "qwerty.".replace('.', '', 1) # 1 -> replace count (only once)
'qwerty'

To delete the last character, use slice:

>>> "qwerty."[:-1]
'qwerty'

UPDATE according to the question edit.

>>> text = "This is a word. This is another word. H.E. Stein"
>>> re.sub(r'(\w{2})\.', r'\1', text)
'This is a word This is another word H.E. Stein'

(\w{2})\.: to match a period just after two word characters. capture the word characters as group 1. later referenced as \1.

Upvotes: 3

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