CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlistlist-comprehensiontext-analysis
Jberk
Jberk

Reputation: 13

Removing digits from list elements

I have a list of job titles (12,000 in total) formatted in this way:
Career_List = ['1) ABLE SEAMAN', '2) ABRASIVE GRADER', '3) ABRASIVE GRINDER']

How do I remove the numbers, parentheses, and spaces from the list elements so that I end up with this output:
Career_List_Updated = ['ABLE SEAMAN', 'ABRASIVE GRADER', 'ABRASIVE GRINDER']

I know that I am unable to simply remove the first three characters because I have more than ten items in my list.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1782

Answers (3)

Prune
Prune

Reputation: 77900

Split each career at the first space; keep the rest of the line.

Career_List = ['1) ABLE SEAMAN', '2) ABRASIVE GRADER', '3) ABRASIVE GRINDER', '12000) ZEBRA CLEANER']
Career_List_Updated = []

for career in Career_List:
    job = career.split(' ', 1)
    Career_List_Updated.append(job[1])

print Career_List_Updated

Output:

['ABLE SEAMAN', 'ABRASIVE GRADER', 'ABRASIVE GRINDER', 'ZEBRA CLEANER']

One-line version:

Career_List_Updated = [career.split(' ', 1)[1] \
                       for career in Career_List]

Upvotes: 1

Matthew Cole
Matthew Cole

Reputation: 597

Take advantage of the fact that str.lstrip() and the rest of the strip functions accept multiple characters as an argument.

Career_List_Updated =[career.lstrip('0123456789) ') for career in Career_List]

Upvotes: 2

Efron Licht
Efron Licht

Reputation: 498

We want to find the first index that STOPS being a bad character and return the rest of the string, as follows. 

def strip_bad_starting_characters_from_string(string):
    bad_chars = set(r"'0123456789 )") # set of characters we don't like
    for i, char in enumerate(string):
        if char not in bad_chars
            # we are at first index past "noise" digits
            return string[i:]

career_list_updated = [strip_bad_starting_characters_from_string(string) for string in career_list]

Upvotes: 0

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