CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7
Andy2
Andy2

Reputation: 39

How to remove symbols from both sides of a string?

How would I go about removing characters from the left side of a Python string? Example:

string='@!#word '

I know I can use strip('@!# ') to get

string='word'

but I need a general code to remove all the characters that are not alphabet

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2115

Answers (8)

Maxime Chéramy
Maxime Chéramy

Reputation: 18851

If you only want to strip characters from both sides (i.e. do not remove symbols in the middle):

string = '@!#word '
s, e = 0, len(string)
while s < e and not string[s].isalpha():
    s += 1
while s < e and not string[e - 1].isalpha():
    e -= 1
print(string[s:e])

Upvotes: 0

Austin
Austin

Reputation: 26039

This removes all non-alphabets and non-integers from both ends of the string while preserving special characters appearing within the string:

import re, string

name = "@!#word"
al_nums = re.sub('[\W_]+', '', string.printable)
extra_chars = ''.join([i for i in name if i not in al_nums])

print(name.strip(extra_chars))
# word

Upvotes: 0

Srinivasan JV
Srinivasan JV

Reputation: 705

Here's my try:

a=list('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ')
name = "@!#word"
i=0
b=[]
for i in range(0,len(name)):
    if(name[i] in a):
        b.append(name[i])
b=''.join(b)
print(b)

  • A list is created with lower case & upper case alphabets. Individual elements of the string is tested against the list using is. If True, the element is appended to an empty list.

  • Finally, joining the list gives the characters that are only alphabets.

    I've only just begun learning Python. Please let me know if this method isn't pythonic.

Upvotes: 0

Patrick Artner
Patrick Artner

Reputation: 51683

Only cleans at start and stop, non-regex, special chars inside will be preserved:

from string import ascii_letters as letters

text ='@!#word @! word  '

def cleanMe(text):
    t = list(text)
    while t and t[0] not in letters:
        t[:] = t[1:] # shorten list as long as non-letters are in front
    while t and t[-1] not in letters:
        t[:] = t[:-1] # shorten list as long as non-letters are in back

    return ''.join(t)

w = cleanMe(text)

print (w)

Output:

word @! word

Upvotes: 0

Rakesh
Rakesh

Reputation: 82785

Use Regex.

import re
string='@!#word '
print(re.sub('[^A-Za-z]+', '', string))

Output:

word

Use this if you need to remove special chars on the sides.

Ex:

import string
s='@!#word '
print(s.rstrip(string.punctuation).lstrip(string.punctuation))

Output:

word

Upvotes: 2

wizzwizz4
wizzwizz4

Reputation: 6426

You can do this with a regular expression that matches the beginning of the string and all non-alpha characters after it:

import re
re.sub(r'^[A-Za-z]*', '', string)

Upvotes: 0

Saranya Sridharan
Saranya Sridharan

Reputation: 226

You can use filter function to do that with the help of string functions.

string='@!#word '
string = filter(str.isalnum, string)
print string

Upvotes: 0

Vikas Periyadath
Vikas Periyadath

Reputation: 3186

"code to remove all the characters that are not alphabet" If you are looking for this you can try using join :

string='@!#word '
new_str = ''.join(i for i in string if i.isalpha())
print(new_str)

O/p will be like :

'word'

Upvotes: 0

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